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Reading Week – Now More Than Ever

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Hiya.

First off, I want to say thank you to all of you who took the time to read and reply to my last missive, it was lovely to hear from so many of you.

Current lockdown mood:

A few things have cheered me up a bit, though, including: writing at my floor desk, the long-delayed arrival of my birthday order from Eteaket (which included my favourite breakfast and peppermint teas and a lovely springy raspberry/rose/vanilla candle), creme-filled Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and figuring out that 45-minute yoga sessions are the ideal home practice length (for me, for now).

Thank you to all of you who took the time to read and reply to my last missive, it was lovely to hear from so many of you.

We’ve been getting our first taste of 105°F/42°C weather so the air conditioning has been blasting and I’ve been regularly finding the cats snuggled up in one bed…
 

THIS & THAT

There’s been a bit of a trend on BookTube (YouTube for books) lately where people try to read entire book series in 24 hours. Similarly, Leena took about a week to re-read The Hunger Games series in time for the prequel book’s release. It was interesting to see her approach the books again having forgotten more of their content, and take a look with fresh eyes at its themes like climate change and bread and circuses over a decade on from their original release.

Here’s a pleasant look into Tom Gauld’s workspace and process. His cartoons always give me a wee chuckle.

As we move into the summer months, I miss getting out more and more. Baseball is a big part of our lives from May to October, and by this point in the year we’ve usually hit up at least two San Francisco Giants games and made a few trips to our local minor league park. All this to say, I enjoyed Tess McGeer’s “things I miss about baseball“. On my list: catching a groove to a random player’s walk-up music (esp the Spanish language ones), the bums, Ohtani’s impossibly broad shoulders and loping stride, and the worth-every-penny $19 crab Louie sandwich at Oracle Park.

I’m also homesick, so any time videos filmed in Scotland come across my feed it feels like a little respite. I think I’ve shared one or two of Richard’s films before. We met on a business mentorship course a few years ago. Over on his YouTube channel, he was for a spell giving himself a series of weekly challenges, and eventually challenged himself to run the Edinburgh Marathon and make this excellent video about it.

While you’re there, check out his last one, too –– the Three Peaks Challenge.

I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated Jamie Lafferty’s recent blog post about his life and career as a travel writer – First Class, Business Class, Working Class.
 

ON MY NIGHTSTAND

Last time I mentioned The Topeka School by Ben Lerner, whose ending was a damp squib. I don’t know why so many works of literature can’t find reference points outside of our day to day. (I’m thinking of other novels like Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet and Olivia Laing’s Crudo –– neither of which I have any personal interest in reading.) All art is a product of its time and place but there’s something about this autofiction mode that I find removes an inherent transformative move that’s required to turn it into fiction. I find it very tedious.

Lauren Oyler references Lerner’s work and some related issues in her latest piece, For Goodness’ Sake.

On a brighter note, I’m still enjoying Alejandro Zambra. I finished Not to Read, which had many charming essays and a solid handful of Latin American authors to add to my reading list. My order of his novels arrived, and I also read his first novella, Bonsai, this week.

I also started reading Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, a Mexican author whose work focuses on south Mexico and takes some of its inspiration from true stories, a tradition of sensational Mexican journalism, and providing an intense reading experience. I listened in to an author event with her as part of the Transnational Series and she was so engaging and eloquent. I’m a little under halfway through the book and it is delivering on the promised intensity. It’s propulsive and captures the feeling of a really juicy piece of gossip combined with some scenes of gory horror. Read the synopsis, you’ll know if it’s for you.
 

TIL NEXT TIME

Your turn! What are you reading? Are you reading? Leave a reply or go ahead and tweet me.

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x

Reading Week? – Once In A Blue Moon Edition

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It’s been awhile.

In my mind, I know that I haven’t really written anything longer than a caption, in my own voice, for public consumption, in quite some time. But I still get a shock when I look at my wee blog and realise it’s been well over a year since I wrote on this corner of the internet that I pay, and occasionally log in, to maintain.

The internet has become a fraught place, particularly since I moved to California in mid-2016. I kept up my YouTube/BookTube channel until the end of 2017 but it took it out of me. I rekindled my newsletter in 2018, which I did enjoy but for that whole period I always felt like I had been running a weekly 10k and was suddenly tasked with a monthly marathon instead.

Meantime, I’ve maintained a series of gigs and jobs which have involved writing and, as Austin Kleon says, “typing into boxes,” to earn my keep. Lately I’ve been trying to write again, mostly for myself, but I miss the chat. I miss reflecting on the books I’ve been reading and receiving recommendations in return. So here’s another punt at it.
 

WHAT YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

Here’s what’s up with me: I’m still in central California; I recently became a US citizen; I am, like many millions of Americans (yep, still sounds weird) currently furloughed from my job; and I still read quite a lot of books.

Does that about cover it?

It has become abundantly clear that We’re Living In A Failed State.

Fortunately there are some ways to Stay Sane.

Anyway, shall we move on to some other topics?

 

TOTALLY NORMAL PEOPLE

I’m keeping this subheading as I write over my last blog post to keep the format. Last time I wrote, I’d just read Normal People by Sally Rooney. Last week I watched the TV show. Sorry, I know folk have been boring on about it for an entire fortnight now – decades in internet years – but I really enjoyed it.

I had my reservations about the novel and I think the show was more successful in presenting the characters sympathetically and making sense of their annoying behaviour. Last time I wrote that I wished Marianne and Connell could fix each other. This version still made me want to bang their heads together but it was artfully done. Plus there’s a pandemic and we’re all very emotionally fragile and any portrayal of a “should we long distance or should we break up” conversation is absolutely going to wreck me.

If you haven’t read the novel, you can get a sense of its characters through this short story called At The Clinic.

On an unrelated note, but from the same journal, here’s an exceptional piece from Alice Hattrick: Ill Feelings. I’m looking forward to reading her book when it’s published.

 

ON MY NIGHTSTAND

Here’s the thing: I’ve read like a hundred and ten books since I last wrote. Now there’s a more effective measure than time! If you’re still hanging off that cliff from my last missive, The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt ended up being one of my favourite books of 2018.

Right now I have an author who I’m cultivating a little literary affection for: Alejandro Zambra.

I should have listened to my colleague and former editor Jane Graham who has sung his praises consistently since about 2015. But I didn’t. But then Fitzcarraldo had an ebook sale and I finally stumped up a few quid for Zambra’s short story collection, My Documents, and a selection of his criticism, Not To Read. My Documents is easily one of the best short story collections I’ve read –– his observations and casual details really sing. He’ll make you forgive some really shit men for doing awful things by sneaking all their baggage in the back door. I also really enjoy the ways he plays with form. There’s a quiet confidence and a real charisma in his writing.

I usually wait a while between books by the same author but it was only a few days before I began Not To Read. The first three articles are available to read online. The next morning, I woke up and ordered all four of his other books in English (from my fav Chaucer’s Bookshop in Santa Barbara). I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.

I’m also currently reading The Topeka School by Ben Lerner, which was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s dense at the start as it lays its foundations of Topeka in mid-1990, following Adam (a stand-in for Lerner and the main character of his first book, Leaving the Atocha Station) and his parents. Jeff from Book Riot described Lerner’s approach as, “centring his own experience without centring his worldview,” which I find to be true and refreshing. I’ve read a lot about auto-fiction and quite a few books described as auto-fiction and it still sounds like a designation that’s intended to minimise the author’s invention. But I do think that might be the element that separates what Lerner is doing from some other authors’ work, especially those who are lumped into the same category.
 

TIL NEXT TIME..?

Your turn! What are you reading? Are you reading? Leave a reply or go ahead and tweet me.

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x

Reading Week – I Was Elected to Read, Not to Lead

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Happy Friday!

I’m thinking of repurposing Craig Ferguson’s old, “It’s a great day for America, everybody!” with, uhhh, something more realistic. It’s been a bad week. In addition to the tiring news cycle, a water pipe on my house burst the other night and gushed many many gallons water, so I lost about half a day to stress and phone calls and worry. On the bright side, everyone is okay. Not looking forward to receiving that bill, though.

Since I last wrote to you, I paid a visit to Chicago. I like it there! I visited for work but I was able to spend a day book shopping with my friend Rincey and taking in a White Sox (vs Angels) game.

Apart from that, I’ve been reading. Fancy that!
 

IT’S A WRAP

Last month, I mentioned that I’d developed a new reading pattern. I’ve since abandoned it (lol) in favour of attempting to focus on one novel at a time. (Except for the slightly-waylaid Moby-Dick project, which is currently running behind.)

I mentioned Outline by Rachel Cusk last month. I’ll have more to say about it once I have finished the series, which I still intend to do.

On the plane to Chicago, I finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It was clumsy, unrealistic, and super fun. It was a great example of how much you’ll forgive a book for its blunders when it gets the action right. I found it entertaining.

On the plane back from Chicago, I read Normal People by Sally Rooney in its entirety. Some people are upset that it was long-listed but not shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year. I think Rooney is really bright and her strength is in making key characters come alive, fight hard battles, understand and misunderstand each other, and struggle with life in a semi-realistic manner. What she’s not so good at are the realities of class (which are broached, but rather monochromatically), visual description, and plot (to name a few). Sometimes a book is so good at one thing that the rest doesn’t matter. I’m not sure she’s quite there yet. But I did feel for Connor and Marianne and wish they could fix each other – so there’s that.

 

TOTALLY NORMAL PEOPLE

Next, I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh: a somatic tale for our time. The unnamed narrator has led a tragic young adulthood and wants nothing more than to drug herself into a sleepy stupor for a year before – she imagines – emerging a changed woman. I found a lot of what friends said I’d like about Moshfegh here, including unlikeable women and disgusting details. I was really taken with the premise and the pathos around the narrator and her friend Reva’s grief and self-destructive tendencies. There’s a deep sense of tragedy and a convincing layer of disgust and ugly emotions that I’ve seldom seen other authors tackle. Its ending is quite something, though I’m conflicted on how I feel about the author’s use of real-life tragedy as a canvas for her characters. I get the sense that if I read the author’s interrogation of her own ideas the whole thing might come tumbling down. I found the book engrossing, though.

Not-so-engrossing was Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which I picked up in Chicago. I read Never Let Me Go some years ago and enjoyed it well enough, but having already learned the reveal, I was less enamoured with it than I might have been. Remains is a post-war tale of English country life narrated by a butler named Mr Stevens. His reflections on a bygone era are intriguing but subtle, and his consistently muted take on events kept my pulse low, to say the least. Stevens, straight-laced and reserved, is a difficult character to love. This is fine, but I was yearning for something a little darker and more traumatic than what I found. I think it is accomplished, but I didn’t find much to love here.

 

ON MY NIGHTSTAND

Right now… I don’t want to make this sound dramatic but I’m in the throes of newfound love. I’m reading a cult classic: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. First published in 2000, it gained a literary following before going out of print. In 2016, it was resurrected by New Directions. I’ve heard about it on and off for years, particularly as I’ve had her second novel, Lightning Rods, on my wishlist since I first heard about it.

For me, The Last Samurai is a truly enrapturing read. Some of the subject matter is going way over my head (I mean, a 6-year-old character has a better grasp on a simple explanation of the Greek alphabet than I do) but it doesn’t feel like it matters. All I know is that every time I pick it up, I’m utterly engrossed. I keep giving myself 5 more pages, 5 more pages, 5 more pages. Today, I was upset at a café at lunch as the too-loud blasting of Justin Timberlake was too far at odds with its magic. I’ll let you know how well it sticks.

 

TIL NEXT MONTH…

Your turn! What’s on your nightstand? Have you read anything that has really engrossed you lately? Tweet me and tell me about it, please.

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x