and so it came to pass that I listened to “Starter for Ten” which really worked OK as an audio book, and then TRIED to read a free-jacked copy of “One Day” which has the fascinating property of missing parts out, this was fantastic as I got to avoid reading about the bicycle crash (saying no more as it would be a spoiler! Although I suspect everyone on the planet (bar me) has read it by now anyway it is such an alleged best seller)! I also listened to “Flud” which was an even more spectacular success as an audio book in my humble opinion. And now I have moved along to a reading aloud of the classic Brian O Nuallaian (AKA Flan O’Brien) work The Dalkey Archive to my partner, more of which soon. Brevity is due to flu, so we shall see if I can get well soon and update (comments make me heal faster!)

Very soon I am not going to have to think about work too much, and certainly not go there, for three glorious weeks.  Whenever a holiday is approaching reading is always near the top of any list of pleasures I am anticipating.  There have even been a few posts on the subject.  I well remember doing a good deal of research on Dylan Thomas when we were taking a short break to Wales, near the setting of Milk Wood.  An Even earlier memory is hitch hiking all around Eire with a hardback copy of Joyce’s Ulysses tucked into the bottom of my ruck-sack.

In both those cases though there was no actual reading during the holiday (to this day reading Ulyses remains more ambition than reality, likely since it is such an aural book I have learned).  So it is with some trepidation that I share the works I have prepared for this holiday, after going through the now well practiced trials and tribulations of E-book purchase.

There is a collected anthology of Britains Best Loved poems (Manley Hopkins muchly featured) which I am taking to recite to my beloved and share that way.  There is an audio book copy of “Fry’s English Delight” to similarly share and help with any homeless pinings for the mother tongue while we are in France.   And for actual reading there are two well known authors’ works; “Vernon God Little” and “Mother’s and Son’s” (a collection of works by Colm Toibin).  I had high hopes for what seemed a bargain E-book download from an unknown auther called “A Season for Singing” but it turned out what it saved in cost it also saved in length, being an extremely brief work of some dozen pages!  Shall be more lively to that “trick” in future, probably a hazard of E-books.

So, there’s the “trailer” so to speak…. More on this subject soon, when I have cogitated and worked out what it is that goes on with Holiday Reading, or even *gasp* when I am reading/listening/sharing these works!  But don’t hold your breath, experience shows me the anticipation and plans do not always bear fruit in reading at leisure on a break, “The best laid plans….”!

I downloaded this book rather on impulse, but aware of how I had quite enjoyed reading “Saturday”.  I had a great deal of frustration in trying to get the darned Ebook to load and had to resort to reading it on my E-reader so it seems I shall need to keep this as a handy backup device to the BeBook which seems to have issues with DRM that the Sony does not, no doubt thanks to the on board wifi in the BeBook.

I have only just finished the book and it was a quick read.  Hard to take the book entirely seriously, and even harder to take our protagonist, Michael Beard, seriously.  I think it is a great trick that the author pulls off in placing us within the protagonists view that we can ALMOST get our heads around the outrageous way he behaves and ALMOST buy into his self-deceptions.  This is not quite as human and as forgiveable a man as Updike’s Rabit, but then Rabit was the subject of any number of novels and Beard is only of one short work.

The plot is told in chunks of continuous action but set at removes of ten year intervals.  This enables us to deal with a Nobel prize winning scientist who is having trouble coming to terms wth the rest of his life at a point when his actions are catching up with him, specifically the fallout of a disasterous attitude towards women, he is getting his “come uppance” some would say in the disolution of his fifth marriage.  Through the course of the rest of the work this is not the only fallout and, regretably, he is not the only victim.  Bu tthe twists in the plot are expertly managed and even though the ending is somewhat inevitable it is pulled off in a way that remains engaging.

As the noivel drew to a close I did get a nasty taste, but it felt sadly authentic to human nature and the real world.  There were elements of Tom Sharpe humour almost, but with Ian McEwans ability to make it all too believeable this was not funny, just tragic.  I think the only redemption was in the aspect of science, which perhaps is being held up as the true hero and one that transfigures and mere humanity and offers hope for progress where individual lives cannot.

Some little time ago I dipped back into E-book reading determined to make my BeBook Nova (complete with wi-fi and touch screen) work as well as the Sony Ereader had for me.  More of my experiences there later….

But the book I want to try and capture my thoughts on first is “Trespass” by Rose Tremain.  It has been a couple of weeks since I finished it now, time enough to have a settled view on the memory that remains and the way it reverberates with me.  The astounding thing pulled off by the author in her inimitable style is almost to make a house one of the characters, certainly it is totemic within the plot.  I would have to imagine Rose Tremain either being very familiar with Southern Rural France or having done exte3nsive research there, the atmosphere and isolation of some parts is portrayed to great effect.

But all the things I have spoken of so far are like the flesh and clothes of the novel.  The meat and bones are the people, of course, and specifically a brother and sister.  Sketched in the background is a mother idealised by her son and who in reality her daughter had to compensate for.  The effects this had in the adult life of the protagonists are revealed slowly whilst exploring a mirrored situation with a French brother and sister, although in this case there has clearly been a greater parental abuse, but one which is only revealed in all it’s horror as the story unfolds.

I am filled with admiration at the skill with which these themes are interwoven in a compelling tale, one which is begun with an incidental character and a trauma accurately painted - only now as I am writing can I see how this is like a “key” which is used to initially engage you and at the end bring together themes and paint them with colours that give one hope for the progress of humanity.

Even though I have said a great deal about the book none of this will spoil the plot or enjoyment you can get from this book - a very human piece and engaging with it.  Tragic but ultimately uplifting and all with the authority of a highly accomplished author, one of her best works I think, perhaps.

It certainly provided some compensation for the five or so hours I struggled to get it onto my BeBook… I know people rave about how easy their Kindle experiences have been, but of course with my preference for running Open Source and suchlike I have to say I have met nothing but frustration with Ebook purchasing.  The reading is great and so I shall persist, but my first Ebook to Bebook took SEVEN hours struggles (realising at the end that Windows HAS TO BE used).  The second took five, which I then thought would resolve matters since I seemed to have learned all I needed to know… and yet my third novel has just taken three hours to sort and what is more cannot be read at all on the BeBook but only on the Sony!

Enough of a rant - I must get to some fora and see what the significance and usage of the .epub and .acsm extensions is and if there is open source out there which can address this…..

I think there really should be a post on my blog that discusses Holiday reading and books.  In fact there ought to be one whenever I take a holiday.  The last was probably for going to Wales, but this was only a weekend and Dylan Thomas remained untouched!

This time it is a week and it is in Northumbria.  Reading seems a more likely proposition.  My Ereader is loaded with “White Tiger” which is this months choice for the Brixton urban bookgroup.  And I have “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”  on load from my library which is the choice of the reading group there this month.  I also have the unabridged audio book of the same work for the car journey, which I am almost certain we shall manage to fit in since the drive is over six hours long, from London to Northumbria.

That gives the context, and I shall be especially interested to compare my experience of the three media forms, audio, Ereader, and paper.  I shall either make additional posts or edit and expand this one to give an update, assuming I am online whilst on holiday.  Should I be offline the posts will appear on my return, in June!

Well - for once a post which is not directly a book review as such.  I’m a little miffed because my sidebar choice to say what I am reading at the moment has suddenly decided to throw strange MySQL database errors when I try to update it,… so although it is correct that I am currently reading Proust (and only the first volume at that, goodness knows when if ever this will be completed, a few years at least!) similarly the diaries of a justified sinner is somehow languishing on my E-reader mid-read.  In fact my “active” current reading is “Mother’s Milk” by Edward St Aubyn - more of which in the next post I make after next months reading group at the library.

Which brings me to the another sticky subject I am grappling with, that of accessibility and my blog.  Chyrp RC2 has been released as a proper Version 2 since I first set up this blog, and with it comes another “add in module” called Readernaut which (hopefully) will work and allow me to reinstate the current reading feature in my sidebar.  Also since the inception of the blog I have met and fallen in love with a wonderful partially sighted woman.  So it would please me to make the blog work better as a fully accessible site, which I realise is far from the case.  And to complicate matters the geeky friend who hosts my blog has moved servers.  All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I am planning a revamp of the site design and so forth, hopefully transferring all of the content in tact also.  This was a traumatic vent involving almost a week downtime and some shakiness last time.  Hopefully it will go more smoothly this time.  Memo to self - remember to implement the “readmore” link feature and ensure it is accessible with blog redesign.

One of my big hopes is that with the redesign here might be more comments. I know from my own blog reading that a blog does not really “come alive” without comments. Whilst I am aware the traffic is very low I also know I have made posting a comment as easy as I possibly can so I cannot help being a bit miffed at the lack of them. Ok end of pity party. One thing I really know is that bleating on about wanting comments seriously does not invite or encourage them!

Anyway, before that I am moving house and the desk on which the computer will sit to do this wondrous work is yet to be made even - plus I am slated to redesign the website for my local quaker meeting… so I reckon I’ll be lucky to achieve these changes this year however much I am itching to get ahead with them and indulge in a little geekout fest all of mine own.  Second memo to self - must prune my blogroll and check it references current sites and ones I can cope with keeping up on too!  OOOooh did I mention in my blog that Dovergrey Reader got a mention on “Front Row” on BBC Radio Four?  Well I have now… and apparently she is very widely read and respected by publishers, no less!  I felt a strange mix of respect, envy, and rubbing shoulders with celebrity to hear this.  More power to her blog I say!

And to conclude on a more literary note, last night I heard that Mark Haddon has apparently written a play on the subject of bipolar disorder which I may well be interested to see.  I shall actually be somewhat prejudiced when I do though, for two or three reasons.  The main one is that I loathed his follow up to “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” and despite trawling through my blog archive (embarrassing days when it was full of drivel with no focus on literature!) I cannot find reference to it.  I know we did it for the library reading group and I vaguely remember reasons I disliked the book, which I would warn the squeamish to steer well clear of because there is a gratuitously grating description of someone piercing themselves for reasons that escape me.  Anyway life’s too short to review it now and I am losing the point(s).  The second is that although I liked his most successful work I am not at all sure it was especially accurate in offering any insight into Aspergers (although it may have had some points I think it did not get across how Aspergers has such a very broad spectrum at all and made it seem more disabling than it truly is).  Which brings me to my greatest misgiving, which is that I myself live with “bipolar light” as Stephen Fry describes it.  So if I reckon he did a poor job of portraying Aspergers I’ll be the most critical person and arguably qualified to judge how he manages as a playwright.  Who knows, we may yet have another post here under the “drama” category!

Over my holidays I took quite a few books with me, the majority on my ereader and two in paperback format.  I finished one of the paperbacks and found, as usual, that I was not going to get much further with Proust on my ereader!  Since the other paperback was not so appealing it was really nice that my uncle lent me a copy of “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner” by James Hogg.  I’m still reading this, but it is the main subject of the posting.

Before I start though let me just say a little about the book I finished reading.  There would have been an earlier post for this, but i was on holiday from being online as well as from London!  I had been under the impression that I was reading a first novel when i started “The Savage Garden” by Mark Mills but at book group I learned this was his second novel.  It did not really show as such to me.  I found it gauche and the inclusion of gratuitous and vaguely salacious sex scenes did not improve matters.  A contrived plot sees a young graduate in Tuscany, where he shows us how attractive and modest he is when the local women seem to flock around him and swoon.  Methinks the author is playing with his own identification with the main chracter.  The writing is equallty inept in the florid use of analogies and similies - as one member of the reading group pointed out, describing the touch of a woman’s thigh as “dough like” is not really a fabulous idea from the female point of view!  It did however work as a piece of holiday reading, one can flip through and get it read fast enough without troubling oneself that life is too short to read such things.  Think of it as reading pap to relax from more enjoyable and worthwhile reading.

When it comes to the subject of my posting though, I need to turn to the first book I mentioned above.  As you can clearly see from Wikipedia the author is a truly remarkable man!  I cannot quite believe that he started out in life as a shepherd and only in adult life became a more or less self educated author.  More than that, he managed to write a work that has come to feature as a classic work with a particular appeal as being of great historical interest.  It is entirely possible that this may attract a contemporary audience, if it is true that Ian Rankin is collaborating on a screenplay as my uncle tells me.

I cannot complete my opinions of the work yet, given that I am still reading it, but already I know that it appeals to me on two levels, both as a novel in it’s own right and as a work of great historical interest.  Perhaps it could be compared with something like “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins as an exciting read.  Of course the Wilkie Collins work has been adapted for stage and it appears Hoggs may make it to screen, one of the reasons the comparison sprang to mind.  If I have the time and given that I was on holiday in Edinburgh the work also appeals to me as a historical sourse informing me about Scottish History and the reformation.

There is yet one more level on which I enjoy the work though!  It deals with the idea that a person can act in the name of Religion and perpetrate acts which are anything but religious.  In this case Fratricide, marital rap, and more all feature!  But the character believes he is acting in accord with “God’s will” and this absolves him of personal moral responsibility.  Could this arguement not equally be applied in modern times as one we need to consider in facing the challenge of terrorism and so forth?

But to come back to the title subject - please consider this edition of the work, from Edinburgh University Press if you have any plans to buy it.  Although the original text is standard (and readily available online and in numerous paper editions) a good deal of the pleasure in this work is the considerable body of historical notes and research around the book and it’s author.  Incidentally there is a preview of the work at Google Books and the link above takes you there..

This is not the only reason to get a particular edition, there remain one or two more.  Perhaps the cover picture can be extremely annoying or misleading.  If you are bothered by such trivia then it can be a reason!  On the other hand I have another work (James Joyce’s Ullyses) where I expressly chose the edition I bought because it actually has a different text, one agreed as authentic after considerable study.

So these are the reasons I think the choice of an edition of a work really matters!  I wonder what YOU think?  Feel free to add comments!

When this book was selected by the Urban 75 bookgroup I recently started attending I thought it was going to be a cute rom com or chick lit sort of read about a couple meeting through the intra webz and getting cozey… How WRONG could I be!  But that did not stop me using my new  Sony E-reader and getting a free download of the book in question.  I was quite thrilled about that, thinking it was apposite for the name of the book and calculating that if I could download all my bookgroup choices this way then the device would pay for itself in a matter of months.

As it turns out the use of the word geek pre-dates modern useage and has nothing to do with computers.  Rather the word derives from the freak show person at fairs and carnivals whose role was to bite the heads off live chickens!  The heroine of the novel is an albino midget who has a daughter with a far more minor deformity.  One of the first things you have to confront in this story is the idea of a loving mother and father who intentionally inflict birth defects on their offspring, the reason being to populate their travelling roadshow for the carnival.

This may sound immediately offensive, and objectively it is by all standards of human decency.  This is where I find the book remarkable.  It is normal to be asked to suspend our disbelief for the purposes of fiction.  Here we are challenged to also suspend our moral values and jusdgements.  This I could manage to do, largely because my own upbringing was ourside the “norm” for society.  The use of the term norm is actually to be found throughout this book in a pejorative sense for those who conform.

There are a lot more requirements to suspend disbelief - from the character of “Magneto” who has kinetic powers to the charisma of “Arturo” and the movement he founds that disfigures “norms” by their own choice.  One character I found quite repelent is the normal woman who elects to try to “save” certain women by subjecting them to surgical procedures, and indeed she meets a sticky end in the story.

Although it may sound as if I have given away a good deal of the plot I hope these are tasters rather than spoilers and that anyone who reads this will be sufficiently intrigued by them to read this challenging and engaging book.  Although I downloaded it for free I would gladly pay the cover price for what I found to be a great read and a fine first novel.

On a side note - the urban bookgroup was one I started attending when I had no paid employment - as a result taking a bottle of wine along seemed a pricey option and so I developed the habit of baking a cake to take.  I may well keep this up now that I have work, because I enjoy it and they seemed to go down well.  There was the notable time I baked my finest chocolate cake to date and turned up a day late (I had to share with friends and eat it all myself!) and the last time the hostess had baked a fine fruitcake making my efforts irrelevant, but by and large I like the idea and would recommend it to others.