Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon

 

It's time for the read-a-thon. I have not joined in much the last couple of times, too distracted and unable to focus, or working, or just lazy. I have done quite a lot of reading in recent months but only in short bursts at bedtime. It's my long weekend off and a day of just sitting and reading sounds like a good way to avoid feeling like I should do some hoovering. There has been no advance planning so I will just gather a few books and get the kettle on. 

Well Claire woke me up with a text and I thought it was the boss asking me to come to work, so that was a relief. All set up for the day, though I will not stay up in my bed nook all day.

I am part way through 'A Thousand Moons' by Sebastian Barry that I bought from Chorlton Bookshop recently so that is first in the pile. I have poetry from Jack Mapanje and Imtiaz Dharker, 'My Dark Vanessa' by Kate Elizabeth Russell and 'When I was a child I read books' by Marilynne Robinson that is on my 101 books list and I found in a charity shop the other week. I downloaded an audiobook of 'Race Matters' by Cornel West after reading a fascinating interview in the Guardian the other day, so that can accompany a bit of crochet (still working on a sofa blanket for a friend's wedding present). I think we have something for every mood.

You can visit other people who are participating and see what they are reading here (though I am working my own schedule so it's not officially started yet). Hope everyone has a wonderful reading day.

Shutdown Readathon

Life has been weird. Has your life been weird? 

Work has been frenetic. People are buying stuff like its Christmas.

The cat however does not know anything is different. 

She has become fascinated with watching for the strays that visit our yard.

Today I am off, coinciding quite pleasingly with the (last) Readathon.

I am starting when I feel like it, which is any time now 

when I have made another cuppa.

Monkey scored some plain flour at Asda so we can have pancakes.

We also have rice krispie cake.

I am reading Milkman by Anna Burns, winner of the Booker in 2018.

 It is weird. Do I really need more weirdness in my life?

I have a nice bench in the garden but have to wait for the sun to come over the yardarm.

Enjoy your day.

25 hour Readathon

It's 14.40 and I just got back from work, and welcome to the Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, though this time coinciding with the moving back of the clocks, so we get an extra bonus hour of reading. Tish introduced me to a new member of the household, called  Geraldine. She is keen to join in so I am lending her a few books. 

I have actually bought several new books recently, including 'The Night of Camp David' by Fletcher Knebel which was rereleased last year in the light of the current political situation. Mum gave me 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine' and I am very much looking forward to that one, having read nice reviews.



So Hi to all fellow readers, will visit some other participants and maybe do some of the challenges later when we need a break; Monkey is back from volleyball soon and Tish may join us later after stripper class.

7.00pm
Well, ten pages in I had a little nap to recover from work but its all silent reading here now as we wait for the pizza to arrive.
I am reading 'A Keeper of Sheep' by William Carpenter, was part way in before we started but have read nearly 100 pages.
Monkey is reading 'Beautiful You' by Chuck Palahniuk and has read about 90 pages.
Toby does not want to share what he is reading, but he is here on the sofa with us.

Nearly 11.00pm
I finished my first book, 245 pages. Monkey finished hers and has moved on to 'Heroes' by Stephen Fry. I am going to make more tea, then start 'Eleanor Oliphant is completely Fine'.

8.50am
Monkey and Toby left me on the sofa about 11. I read till about 4 when I was flagging so a couple of hours sleep. The cat woke me up about 7. I have finished 383 pages of 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine' by Gail Honeyman. Unfortunately I have to go to work this morning so I couldn't risk being awake all night, though I have only just remembered the clocks (the one on my phone and the kitchen one still showing summer time) so I have actually got time for breakfast and another hour of reading.

Politics and Reading

Today and probably a bit tomorrow we are participating in the 24 in 48 readathon, designed for people who want to join in with Dewey but need their sleep. It's always nice to have another excuse to stuff the house cleaning and sit on the sofa all day. Other more out-doorsy stuff happening tomorrow for everyone (trying to make the most of the sunshine before it leaves us) so it will be mainly today ... we will just see how much we can manage. I thought I would join in with their suggestion and time the reading instead of doing our usual page count. Not really planned the day as such, I just have a couple of things that are already in progress so I am going to get on with them: The Idiot by Elif Batuman, yet another from the Women's Fiction Prize shortlist, and The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal. Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald needs some concentration rather than my usual bedtime twenty minutes so I thought I would give it another start today too.

Monkey and I popped down to London last week for the big Festival of Resistance that accompanied the visit from whats-his-name. It was a fantastic day, even though we could not hear the speakers due to Trafalgar Square being too packed, just great to be reminded that there are lots of people who care. Here is my favourite protest sign:

I made this banner/sunshade at the last minute having not been inspired with anything witty or profound to put on a placard. We met up with my sister Claire, but missed my brother Giles who also took the day off. A right wing relative in the States was disgusted that all those people failed to turn up for work, which left us just a little bemused.

In other news I have been in correspondence with Her Majesty over modern forms of address for married couples. My parents recently celebrated their diamond 60th wedding anniversary and if you get in touch with the palace (or through the central registry office as I did) the Queen will very kindly send them a congratulatory message. The message came, however, addressed to 'Mr and Mrs Martin Frampton', as if my mother has no separate existence of her own ... so I wrote a very polite letter expressing my disappointment that such an antiquated form of address should be used in the 21st century. Here is the disappointing reply:

I am not sure that Charles would be any more receptive so am thinking of writing to William if they make it to 70 years.

I really should write some book reviews

I read some books during the read-a-thon, and now it was weeks ago. In my defence I have been working a lot, including my Sundays in the cage (the cage no longer looks like a cage since the renovation of the office, but it is still referred to as the cage.) 

Michael Marshall Smith's book 'Only forward' was quite a change of genre for me, and a thoroughly engaging and surreal one. Set in a future where a massive city extends from shore to shore; it is divided into autonomous neighbourhoods each with their own very distinct 'personalities', some keep themselves separate by high walls while others have a more open access policy. Our hero Stark is hired to search for a missing person, and finds himself breaking into one particularly isolated neighbourhood, the North Korea of the story. Mixed in with the main plot is the story of how Stark and his friend ended up in this world in the first place, with an amusing little twist at the end. It is well plotted and engaging written, and I can see it would make a great film. 

Here Stark is in Natsci, finding his way around with an interactive map:
"All in all, I was a stressed little bundle of fun as I tramped down a variety of streets to one of the Neighbourhood's residential areas, guided by the quiet promptings from the map. I stopped off at a newsagents to pick up some more cigarettes and scanned a copy of Centre News to see if there was any mention of Alkland's disappearance, but the whole thing as clearly still under wraps. Back on the streets I tossed my old packet away and a nearby catcher droid made an astounding leap to take the catch three inches off the ground.
'Nice one,' I said.
'Got any more?' asked the machine enthusiastically, scooting up close to my feet. It was a little metal cylinder with a flashing red light on the top, and had a spindly metal arm with a tiny mitt at the end.
I rooted in my pockets.
'Don't think so.'
'Boo hiss.'
'Go away, droid,' said the map, irritably.
I found an old matchbox and held it out.
'Brilliant! Go on, chuck it really hard,' the droid said, poised for action.
I spun the matchbox down the street and the droid zipped after it. It was touch and go, but with another full-length dive the machine managed to get its mitt to it. It waved and then sped off down the street towards a leaf falling about a hundred yards away. Two other droids got there at the same time and there was an audible clang as they made contact, but one of them got it and went bouncing off down the street, waving the leaf triumphantly above its head." (p.211-12)

Barbara Comyns is on my 101 books list, but it was 'Our Spoons came from Woolworths' that I found in the charity shop. It is a 1930s tale of love and struggle for a young woman Sophia, based on Barbara's own marriage. She is this wonderful naive character, who is taken advantage of by a wastrel husband, but who has surprising reserves of strength and resilience. I liked her. The book reminded me very much, stylistically, of Cold Comfort Farm.

Here are her thoughts on contraception:
"After about three months I forgot about feeling sick, but the baby weighed on my mind quite a lot. Before I married Charles I used to hope I would have masses of children. I thought it would be nice always to have at least one baby and quite a number of older children all developing in their individual ways, but before we got married Charles told me he never wanted to have any children, and I saw they would not fit in with the kind of life we would lead, so I just hoped none would come to such unsuitable parents - anyway, not for years. I had a kind of idea if you controlled your mind and said 'I won't have any babies' very hard, they most likely wouldn't come. I thought that was what was meant by birth-control, but by this time I knew that idea was quite wrong." (p.26)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798 and it has certainly stood the test of time. This version is illustrated with wonderful atmospheric drawings by Mervyn Peake. 
Here, the moment when the ghostly ship comes alongside:

"Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was a white as leprosy,
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

The naked bulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
'The game is done! I've won! I've won!'
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dew did drip - 
Till climb above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard not sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one." (Part Three) 

In the early hours

1am: We reach the halfway point and, having had brief naps to keep ourselves going, we are making good progress. The Readathon website has set itself a target of 1,000,000 pages between the participants so we will keep our own count here and add only reading for the official hours (1pm Saturday to 1pm Sunday) to their count.

Monkey finished Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and is now reading 'Foundation and Empire' Isaac Asimov. Her running total is 550 pages.
Tish joined us part way through the evening and is reading 'Sleeping Beauties' by Stephen and Owen King, and has read 108 pages.
I am still reading Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith and am at page 150, giving me a running total of 607 pages.

10.10am: Good morning readathoners. We had a busy night, with cake and more books. 
Tish finished Sleeping Beauties and then went off to sleep for a bit (not sure of her page count as she was already most of the way through the very hefty tome). 
Monkey gave up on Foundation and Empire because she was feeling a bit droopy and though a change of pace might help. She is now reading 'Survivor' by Chuck Palahniuk and is at page 135, working backwards from page 298 (yes the pages and chapters are numbered in reverse). 
Having had a couple of hours sleep I have finally finished Only Forward (page count 310), which was utterly surreal, but had something of 'The End of Mr Y' by Scarlett Thomas about it. I am thinking I will go back to Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that I have been listening to on audiobook for several weeks, and do some crochet. More tea may be in order.

I spent the last couple of hours on my own as Monkey went off the volleyball club. Instead of Black Swan I decided on some poetry and read 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 32 pages, aloud, just to myself, and reread 'Inside The Wave' by Helen Dunmore that has been by bedtime book for a few weeks now after it was highly recommended by Dove Grey Reader. Then I went back to the graphic novel 'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi that I started last readathon, and will have to finish outside official readathon statistics.
My final total is 932 pages, of which 738 pages were read in the 24 hours.
And what I mainly have now is a massive backlog of books to review!
Monkey's total is 774, of which 665 were read in the 24 hours.
Tish's total is 224 pages.

Spring Readathon - Saturday updates

The review of Harvest by Jim Crace will have to wait for another day as it is just after ten and we are settling down for the biannual Dewey's Readathon. We are a bit ahead of our official start time, but I am usually at work on readathon day so we are just making the most of the occasion. We have our snacks and  the tea is ready so ...

Monkey is starting with 'A Riot of Goldfish' by Kanoko Okamoto, which we came across when researching novels by Japanese women.
I am starting with 'What We Lose' by Zinzi Clemmons that I read about recently. 

We have our usual eclectic mix of potential reads, something for any mood or state of mind. Good luck to all the participants today, we hope you have a fantastic reading experience. Do pop over to the readathon website and have a go at some of the crazy challenges.

13.24pm: Monkey finished Riot of Goldfish by the official start time, 109 pages, and is now reading 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' by George R R Martin.
I have read to page 194 of What We Lose, nearly finished. Am thinking of 'Silent Spring' by Rachel Carson next, which has been on the TBR pile for thirty years or so.

19.00pm: I read a few chapters of Silent Spring but it was rather depressing, so I moved on to 'Our Spoons Came From Woolworths' by Barbara Comyns, now finished at 196 pages. Monkey is up to page 239 of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. We are currently waiting for the pizza, and I am about to start 'Only Forward' by Michael Marshall Smith.

Readathon October 2017

Dewey's Readathon is with us once again for our biannual slouch on the sofa day. Despite a very much extended working day I made it back a mere two hours after the official start time. There are no spare batteries anywhere in the house so we cobbled together a photo using photobooth. We dashed out yesterday to pick up our copy of Philip Pullman's 'The Book of Dust' part 1 ... yes I know it came out on Thursday but I was too soggy and late after work to make it to Chorlton Bookshop. We have books, we have snacks, we have a hexipuff quilt to keep us cosy. I don't even feel that sleepy considering I have been up since 4am, though I don't anticipate being able to make the full 24 hours this time. Monkey is starting the day with 'Naked Lunch' by William S Burroughs and is on page 115. I am reading Anne Frank's diary, for the third time, in anticipation of our trip to Amsterdam next month, and am at page 63.

Over on The Book Monsters you can join in with the 'Book and Beverage' challenge.

5.30am I've had a little nap but Monkey has made it through the night. I finished Anne Frank's Diary and Monkey finished Naked Lunch. I am now reading 'The Hate U Give' by Angie Thomas, that has been my breakfast book/tram book for a couple of weeks, and Monkey is reading 'The Magus' by John Fowles, a book that I pressed on her having been a serious John Fowles reader during my 20s.

7.30am Monkey is having a nap and I have finished The Hate U Give. Not sure what to read next.

9am. I am reading 'Carrying the Elephant' by Michael Rosen. I like this poem.

Briefly, two readathon books

I picked up '38 Bahadurabad' by Zeeba Sadiq completely at random at E.J. Morton in Didsbury and was utterly entranced by it. It tells the story of a young girl, Zeebande, growing up in Pakistan in the 1960s. Much of it concerns her relationship with her beloved father, though the cast of family and friends is quite extensive. What is so engaging is the everydayness of the incidents that she recounts, you get such a vivid picture of what their life is like; there is a wonderful contrast of closely observed details and naive childlike impressions and thoughts. Here Bashi Mamoo comes around to take tea with the ladies:

"Bashi moved towards the doctor, hand outstretched, as Zeebande fell into line behind him, aping his curious gait, his spine arched backwards like a pregnant woman, his two huge feet set at a permanent ten to two angle. Lax, who had been alerted by the child's shrieks of delight, pretended not to notice and scuttled to the kitchen to make tea. The doctor chuckled.
Bashi was in every way an enigma to Zeebande, a story-book character. He wasn't family that she was aware of, and he had no family of his own. She didn't know where he lived, though she knew that there was an open invitation for him to join them at Bahadurabad, and she could never place the strange idiom in which he spoke, part Urdu, part Persian, and part a language that appeared to be of his own invention.
He was odd-looking, of indeterminate age, though his permanent grey five o'clock shadow suggested that he was nearer her father's age than her mother's. His nose started orthodoxly at the eyeline before flowering into a bulbous tip that very nearly reached to his upper lip. At a 45 degree angle to this nose a biri would invariably be perched between his lips, though seldom lit, and an antique pair of glasses balanced improbably on the nose, one arm long since broken and replaced by a sturdy elastic band that he somehow managed to manoeuvre round his right ear. Bashi Mamoo always wore pyjamas, ill-fitting and hoisted a good four inches above his ankles, and a long white shirt guarded by two sturdy waistcoats. It is entirely conceivable that Bashi's unorthodox walk was a counter to the weight contained in the pockets and lining of those waistcoats, for they accommodated a veritable warehouse of watches, lighters, pens, cigarette holders and rings that he hawked around the streets of the city each day. An additional array of watches was always hidden under the long loose sleeves of his shirt. 'These are my bread and butter,' he used to tell Zeebande as she gazed wide-eyes at this mobile market stall.
'Can I have tea too?' Zeebande asked ten minutes later as Laxmi poured from the delicate china pot.
'You don't like tea, beti,' her Nani interrupted as she stirred sugar into her own cup.
'I do today,' the child countered cussedly, knowing that she would get her way." (p.82-3)

I am not sure, like with 'Good Omens', that there is much to say about 'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman that has not be opined elsewhere. Two very unpleasant murderers are on the trail of a young woman called Door, and when she falls on the pavement at Richard Mayhew's feet he obeys his first instinct which is to help her. He comes to regret this in more ways that you can at first imagine. He finds his life rapidly spiralling out of control, or rather just disappearing, and he is obliged in his turn to take refuge in a world below the streets of London of which he was hitherto unaware. While there is a dastardly plot afoot I felt it takes second place to the sheer inventiveness of the environment that he has created, peopled with a cast of characters that are quite literally London's landmarks brought to life.

Here is Richard, finding something to eat at the Floating Market:

"Another whiff of cooking food wafted across the floor, and Richard, who had managed to forget how hungry he was ever since he had declined the prime cut of roast cat - he could not think how many hours before - now found his mouth watering, and his thinking processes beginning to grind to a halt.
The iron-haired woman running the next food stall he came to did not reach to Richard's waist. When Richard tried to talk to her, she shook her head, drew a finger across her lips. she could no talk, or did not talk, or did not want to talk. Richard found himself conducting the negotiations for a cottage-cheese and lettuce sandwich, and a cup of what looked and smelled like a form of home-brewed lemonade, in dumb show. His food cost him a ballpoint pen, and a book of matches he had forgotten he had. The little woman must have felt that she had got by far the better of the deal, for, as he took his food, she threw in a couple of small nutty biscuits.
Richard stood in the middle of the throng, listening to the music - someone was, for no reason that Richard could easily discern, singing the lyrics of 'Greensleeves' to the tune of 'Yakkety-Yak' - watching the bizarre bazaar unfold around him, and eating his sandwiches." (p.112-3)

The morning after the night before

It's 7.37am. 

Cups of tea count : 7ish

Pages read : lots

Books finished : 3

Walks round the block : 3

Hours slept : none 

Neverwhere is growing on me, I am now at page 211. Dunk came down about 6.30 and made me a hot cuppa; I have mostly made and then forgotten to pour them all night. Monkey has made slow progress with Foundation having dozed on and off for a couple of hours, but has reached page 133. 

We are in the home stretch now.

11.23am. We finished our books simultaneously a few minutes ago, both satisfied with the outcome. Neverwhere 372 pages

Foundation 234 pages

Pizza all gone, fruit all gone but there is cake left.

I think I've had enough tea now ... to last me until next week (or till tea time, whichever is sooner)

1.00pm

We fizzled to a stop in the last half and hour and chatted, but we made it to the end, and this has been my first Readathon where I stayed awake for 24 hours. Time for sleep now I think.

Final totals 

Me: 853 pages

Monkey : 702 pages

Tish : 144 pages

Readathon April 2017

Happy Readathon Day

We started the day a little early so are already making good progress. Monkey is enjoying the delights of Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and has read 177 pages.

I have started with The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain and am at page 138.

Cups of tea count: 3

We have a healthy selection of roasted nuts and dried fruit to help us through the early stages. 

Over at Outlandish Lit Julieanne is currently running a challenge to draw a book cover from memory.

See you later for updates.

7.15pm. After a little coaxing we have been joined by Tish, who is reading The 100 Year Old Man who Climbed out the Window and Ran Away by Jonas Jonasson and has reached page 82. Monkey has read 282 pages of Good Omens and I have just finished The Gustav Sonata, at 240 pages, giving us a grand total so far of 604 pages read. I have ordered the pizza so we are all set for a few more hours.

11.30pm We had cake and then Monkey and I went for a little walk around the block to refresh ourselves.Tish went off to bed after 144 pages. Monkey has finished Good Omens at 404 pages and is now starting Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I read a bit of Eileen Myles 'I must be living twice' but found her poems a bit aimlessly meandering. I read 47 pages of George Monbiot's 'How Did We Get Into This Mess?', articles from the Guardian, published by Verso Books. I am currently giving 'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman an hour but am not sure about it yet (72 pages).

2.50am Monkey is snoozing. I have been reading '38 Bahadurabad' by Zeeba Sadiq (132 pages). Having spent that last couple of hours reading through her eccentric childhood and becoming enamoured of this wild and passionate child I find myself saddened to discover that she died in August 2010.

Biannual snooze on the sofa day

Life potters on, we read, and make stuff, and occasionally go to work. I took a brief break from the crochet granny squares (which are coming along pretty well),

to make a pair of socks,

and then another Shalom cardigan. 

I made one for mum quite a few years ago, and decided that an upcoming family wedding was an excellent excuse to make on for myself to go with my yellow Gudrun dress. Unfortunately I didn't order enough yarn ... oh what a pity, another visit to Black Sheep will be necessary.

Tomorrow sees Monkey and I settling down on the sofa for the Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon. We have been partaking in this for several years, and although we invariably do have a nap at some point we have cake and snacks to sustain us through the wee small hours. It feels wrong that we need an excuse to just read all day. 

Book debris: Readathon ... the morning after

It's been a long night, most of which I slept while Monkey watched over me, but then again I had done a full day's work before starting a 24 hour Readathon. Pizza and cake have been eaten ... and a surprising amount of books have been read. 
Monkey has read:

• The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
• The Fault in our Stars by John Green

Currently reading Paper Towns by John Green.

I have read:

• The Fault in our Stars by John Green
• Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World by Donald Antrim

Currently reading Boneland by Alan Garner

We have a few hours still to go and I have a fresh cup of tea. I hope everyone out there in readathon land is having a great 24 hours. 

Dewey's Readathon 2016 (not an A to Z post)

This fox was basking in the sunshine in our garden a couple of days ago and I always consider it a privilege to encounter wildlife at close quarters; she stayed for quite a few minutes, grooming herself and then stretching out on the grass, until she became aware of being observed through the kitchen window and made off through the undergrowth. Just sharing because...

We are all ready for the April Dewey's Readathon tomorrow; books are stacked, snacks are purchased, and I am hoping for a swift day at work so I can get back for a reasonable time. I looked up a few 'saved' book reviews and managed to find some of them available in the library, and we did a swift charity shop trawl this morning and came home with Asimov (for 10p), 'Dune' and 'Into the Wild' for Monkey and 'Tony Hogan bought me an Ice Cream' for me from the 99p table. I am going to start with 'The Fault in our Stars' by John Green, because I can rely on it to be a quick enjoyable read. Good luck to everyone participating, we will certainly do a bit of visiting and join in with some of the crazy challenges.

Welcome to the Monkey Read-a-thon

9.30am

Since Monkey missed out on the Dewey's Read-a-thon last week (and I didn't really participate much) we decided to have our own private read-a-thon today. So here is a picture of grumpy Holly, who is joining us on the arm of the sofa. I'm beginning the day with 'Cold Comfort Farm' by Stella Gibbons that I pinched from mum and dad's house. Monkey is starting with 'More Than This' by Patrick Ness, that I bought at the Manchester Literature Festival for her (even though the hole in the cover is really annoying). 

5.00pm

'Cold Comfort Farm' was a delight, and just as enjoyable as the film that Dunk and I watched a couple of months ago. Monkey gave up on 'More than this' and has been reading 'Lullaby' by Chuck Palahniuk. We have dozed a little bit on the sofa and eaten some rice krispie cake. I am moving on to 'The Last Kings of Sark' by Rosa Rankin-Gee that I ordered specially from the library, it having been on my wishlist for quite some time. 

11.00pm

We had some chinese food and watched part of 'The Princess Bride' for half an hour or so. Later we read a few chapters of 'The Hobbit', we have been reading it aloud to each other over the course of the last few read-a-thons. Monkey was dozing off as I get to the bit where Bilbo helps the dwarves to escape from the elvish castle at the edge of Mirkwood, so we called it a night.

The Yellow Wallpaper, The Lighthouse and all that (not an A to Z post)

Dewey's 24 hour Read-A-Thon was a low key affair with no Monkey for company but I did have a nice long evening of uninterrupted reading, which is quite a rare thing for me. I joined a read-along of Charlotte Perkins Gilman 'The Yellow Wallpaper' but could not find any discussion of the story on the host blogs. I was expecting it to be a novella, but it is quite a brief short story, and maybe all the more intense for it. Told first person it charts a young woman's descent from a "temporary nervous depression" into the depth of psychosis. It is the kind of tale that leaves you angry and frustrated, at the treatment and attitudes that women had to endure at that time (written well over 100 years ago), but also at their seeming inability to resist them. The word 'hysteria' is used to silence women, to explain their emotions and behaviour in terms of their femaleness, something that must be kept under control.
Early on she says, of her husband: "He is very careful and loving, hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour of the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more."(p.5), and it just makes me fume; she is being patronisingly told to be a good girl and do as she is told, and she ends up feeling it is her fault that she does not want to abide by the prescribed 'treatment'. She spends so much time staring at the vile wallpaper she begins to see things in the pattern: "But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so - I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design." (p.10) The presence of this skulking figure begins to dominate here days: "Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through." (p.19) Until gradually, she herself becomes the trapped figure: "If only the top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little. I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much. There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don't like the look in his eyes." (p.20) It is very subtle and low key, a rising tension and suspicion of the people around her. A very disturbing and disconcerting tale. 
All the stories in the book are about women's experiences, how they manage life both with and without men. Many of them tell of women who must charm and win over reluctant husbands so that they can make something more of their lives. The next quote now comes from one entitled 'Turned' about a couple who take in a naive young woman as a servant. When the husband goes away on business the wife discovers that the girl is pregnant, and reacts angrily when she discovers the truth of the situation, but then on further intelligent reflection she makes a wonderfully argued case for the defence of the young girl who in this situation would be viewed by society as a fallen woman:
"Gerta might have done better in resisting the grocer's clerk; had, indeed, with Mrs Marroner's advice, resisted several. But where respect was due, how could she criticise? Where obedience was due, how could she refuse - with ignorance to hold her blinded - until too late?
As the older, wiser woman forced herself to understand and extenuate the girl's misdeed and foresee her ruined future, a new feeling rose in her heart, strong, clear, and overmastering; a sense of the measureless condemnation for the man who had done this thing. He knew. He understood. He could foresee and measure the consequences of his act. He appreciated to the full the innocence, the ignorance, the grateful affection, the habitual docility, of which he deliberately took advantage." (p.145-6)
I have not read all the stories yet but some very interesting insights into the early days of feminist thinking.

The other book I tackled yesterday was 'The Lighthouse' by Alison Moore, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2012. (It won the McKittrick Prize, which was interestingly also won by 'Dirty Work' by Gabriel Weston, that I reviewed a few months ago.) Oh, I hated this book ... but in a good way. I hated some of the characters, which is a pretty strong reaction for me. And then I hated the fact that she left the reader in the lurch at the end, though in retrospect it was the right ending, because sometimes, like Carl, you just won't ever know what happened. 
Futh is very mundane kind of bloke, and you almost like him for it, but maybe pity is closer to what I came to feel. He is taking a walking tour in Germany, to escape the reality of separating from his wife. The sad story of his life unfolds gradually as he watch him stagger wearily through the countryside along the Rhine. He seems to inadvertently miss out on a lot of meals, this was what struck me most about the story. It seemed somehow symbolic. The parallel story of Esther, the owner of the first guesthouse he stays in, is an equally sad one; a woman trapped with a cruel man who's affection she still craves, but who has taken to tormenting him just to get his attention. And the fate of a tiny silver lighthouse hangs in the balance throughout the book. 
First is this quote, because it reminded me of something I wrote on another blog:

"The mooring ropes are dropped into the water and Futh, like a disconcerted train passenger unable to tell whether it is his or the neighbouring train which is pulling out of the station, sees the untethered land drawing away from him. The engine chugs and the water turns white between the dock and the outward bound ferry." (p.3)

In this second Esther is contemplating romantic memories of her courtship with Bernard. It is poignant, but I found her nostalgia cloying because of how hard, and how unrealistically, she clings to it:

"She still has these thing. She keeps them in the drawer of her bedside table and looks through them sometimes, putting the dry flower to her nose. She handles the envelope's contents reverently as if these were the memorabilia of a dead pop star rather than the man she married, the man she still lives with.
Bernard, she thinks, would not recall now which film they saw on their first date, might not even remember that they went to the cinema on that occasion." (p.113)

The story lingers repeatedly over the final days on Futh's childhood, before his mother leaves them. Each time little details are added to the telling. It works beautifully as a repeated memory, the way you mind will go over and over significant events, searching for meaning, wishing, if only, things could have happened differently. I think it was these scenes which sucked me in the most, the mundanity of the moment, that then in hindsight takes on this huge significance:

"Futh, deciding to take a walk, stood up and ambled away. He felt his mother watching him go, but when he glanced back she was not looking at him. He wandered further, until he could no longer hear the drone of his father's voice. He was holding the perfume case which he had taken out of his mother's handbag, the silver lighthouse which his granddad had given to his father. His mother called it 'Uncle Ernst's perfume' as if she were just keeping it safe for him, but she wore it a lot of the time. Futh took the glass vial out of its case. He wanted to smell his mother's scent but he did not remove the stopper."(p.145)

And later that evening:

"That night, back in his own bed, Futh heard his mother in the shower. When she came to his room, standing by his pillow in her dressing gown, her face hanging over him like the moon in the night sky, she no longer smelled of violets or sun cream, or the oranges they had eaten on the way home. She smelled of the cigarettes she liked to smoke when she finished something." (p.148)

Smells feature significantly throughout the telling, good smells and bad ones, smells that turn bitter with the passing of time. Both the characters are yearning, Futh for his lost childhood, Esther for her lost marriage, and the crossing of their paths has fateful consequences. What an unexpectedly excellent book (not that I had low expectations, just that the story description is not very promising), easily short enough to read in one sitting, and well worth seeking out. 

Listening not reading (much)

I went last night, as a volunteer that is (not that we had much to do), to hear Kate Tempest at the Contact Theatre as one of the last event of the Manchester Literature Festival. I was probably the only person in the audience who had not heard of her. She was this lovely mixture of worldly and naive, looking at first glance so young but with a voice that has quite a gritty quality that usually comes with years of hard living. She recited from memory for over 20 minutes her version of the story of Tiresias, it was utterly spellbinding. This is just a little taster of her style to tempt you, there is lots more on Youtube, and if you ever get the chance, do go and see her.

As a consequence I did not really get going on the Read-a-thon until this morning, and actually we have been planning a trip to the Manchester Art Gallery to see an exhibition about the First World War, so the reading has been quite limited compared to last time. Also there has been no cake this time:-( The Monkey is in London so I have not had company to stay up all night with.
I am really enjoying 'The Secret of Lost Things'  by Sheridan Hay and also 'Notwithstanding' by Louis de Bernieres (that I picked up at random in the library when my reserved books had not arrived, despite being 'in transit' for three days.) I hope everyone else out there has been having a good weekend of slouching on the sofa surrounded by books. 

The Innocents

'The Innocents' by Francesca Segal was apparently long listed for the Women's Fiction Prize, and to be honest it surprised me to discover this. The two women in Adam's life, Rachel and Ellie, are, in my humble opinion, rather tired clichés; long term girlfriend Rachel is the naive, demure innocent who longs for the perfect wedding, while her cousin Ellie is the wild child with a troubled past, who's arrival on the scene in the run up to the wedding throws the poor man into a turmoil about what kind of woman he really wants. I did not warm to anyone in the book really, except maybe the grandma. While it purports to be a novel about Adam and his tussle with his conscience I actually found it to be more about the negative side of a close community. How do you make choices about your future when so many other people have such overwhelming expectations about your behaviour and your life. It's not just the immediate families that Adam knows is watching, and judging him, but the entire community. Should he marry Rachel, as he has promised, to keep everyone happy, because it is the 'right thing to do'? Would she really want to be married to someone who's choice was made on that basis? I found the whole thing rather screwed up. The huge sense of belonging that their community provides is balanced by this sense of having your life dictated by other people's expectations, and knowing that if you don't live up to them then you risk being cast out. I found this aspect of the story far more interesting than the supposed suppressed passion between Adam and Ellie. All in all I stuck with it to see where she took the idea, and was very disappointed with the unsatisfactory ending. 

The Martian (not an a to z post)

I read 'The Martian' by Andy Weir at the weekend as part of the read-a-thon. It is verging on an instruction manual on how to survive an extreme experience. It is a little like an outer space version of 'Cast away'. Mark Watney is abandoned on Mars when his team think he has died and they have to make an emergency launch, and his story is recorded in a series of log entries that are interspersed with the story of what is going on back on earth, and also what is happening to the crew who are headed home. 

I have to assume all the science and maths is well researched and real, what would be the point otherwise, but it did get a little dull and I skim read some of the descriptions of how the equipment worked and when he was calculating his oxygen, food and water needs to survive until the next mission arrived. I know nothing about surviving in space but sometimes the whole thing seemed a little far fetched; I would have imagined a punctured space suit was pretty much unavoidably fatal, and I was concerned that their 'Hab' (habitat, I assume) appeared to be little more than a very fancy pressurised tent. He was very clever, though I assume that to get to be an astronaut you would have to be, and yet at the same time very stupid. I am not sure anyone would become so blasé about the life threatening situation he was in. He nearly kills himself several times doing very risky things. If your life depended on the equipment around you then you would be a damn sight more careful with it than he seems to be. It is a very plot driven book and the story lurches from one crisis to the next with our hero coming up with some very imaginative solutions to his problems. I found myself engaged not because he was such a strong character but because you would just have to root for anyone in such a situation. He lacked a certain emotional depth because the whole story is about how he deals with the practical problems, at no point does he really lose hope or have any kind of existential crisis. I was left feeling that he was not particularly changed by the experience, so maybe a bit of a 'bloke book' then. Having said that I did enjoy the book and have a couple of choice quotes that amused me:

"I unravelled Martinez's bed and took the string outside, then taped it to the trailer hull along the path I planned to cut. Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped." (p.220)

"There's an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that's not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you're not in any country's territory, maritime law applies.
So Mars is "international waters"
NASA is an American nonmilitary organisation, and it owns the Hab. So while I'm in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I'm in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I'm back to American law.
Here's the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can't until I'm aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission.
That makes me a pirate!
A space pirate!" (p.260)

"Once I'd shut everything down, the interior of the Hab was eerily silent. I'd spent 449 sols listening to its heaters, vents, and fans. But now it was dead quiet. It was a creepy kind of quiet that's hard to describe. I've been away from the noises of the Hab before, but always in a rover or an EVA suit, both of which have noisy machinery of their own.
But now there was nothing. I never realised how utterly silent Mars is. It's a desert world with practically no atmosphere to convey sound. I could hear my own heartbeat.
Anyway, enough waxing philosophical." (p.284)

Conclusion: I think the film will be excellent.