Hey all, apologies for the quiet on here as late, but I am tres busy doing many things and have rediscovered a somewhat forgotten pleasure: reading for myself, and myself alone. It won't last too long I don't think - I'll very soon have something I am desperate to say - but for now I'm enjoying the experience of it being just me, myself and my page.
In the last few weeks I have read Lewis Hyde's The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, which was quite beautiful and profound, and made me realise some truths like I'm not at all unusual for the type of person I am, and that I'll never be rich unless my writing takes off as I'll always put a lid on my professional activity to leave room for my creative endeavours. A really great book if you're into that kind of thing. I also read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a devastating work of schmaltz, and disappointing similar to Everything is Illuminated, which I think is the superior novel.
Last week there was a glorious re-read of Girl With a Pearl Earring, a quiet classic ever-present in my mind, and also a delve through The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, which made me both sad and excited for the future, but seemed to willfully ignore the fact that not all women in the workplace are Google execs who can demand that their company pay for a business class flight for their nanny so they can commit fully to family and the workplace at the same time, and the some such.
There was also too much focus on one socio-economic and racial group, not enough consideration of welfare, single parenthood or the fact that not everyone has all the components of family and economic life lined up like ducks waiting to be utilised, like idle grandmothers and houses near head offices so they can be the CEO, if just their husband would help them with the washing up. It was well-written though, clipped along at an entertaining pace and I did recognise several people in my life within it.
Anyway, should you miss me until my next post there's always my column to read, as well as my short story Poinsettias, which appears in Danse Macabre #66 (if you click through, turn your sound up.)
x
I've been a bit naughty these last few weeks: I kinda promised that I would read the unread books I have before buying any others and would go to the library if there was anything I was desperate to get my hands on before then....
...obviously, fail - duh - so an In My Mailbox-type post seemed totes appropes.
First, I went to a day of Charleston's 'Small Wonder' short story festival, which was fabulous, and attended a talk called 'Dark Corners' with Sarah Hall and Elif Shafak. From that I came away with this,The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. She was actually there talking about her most recent book, Honour, but I'd heard her talk about this one on The Book Show previously and quite fancied approaching her work a little more chronologically.
'Discover the forty rules of love...
Ella Rubenstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love.
So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabiz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.
It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored...'
Then, after attending Messages from Angela Carter which featured a fabulous reading of her classic 'The Tiger's Bride' which you can listen to by clicking on the link, we went to What Are You Looking At? with Will Gompertz, which was hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, I bought the accompanying book.
According to the blurb, by reading What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye you will learn:
'Conceptual art isn't actually rubbish
Picasso is a genius (but Cezanne might be better)
Pollock is no drip
Cubism has no cubes
A urinal changed the course of art
And why your five-year-old really couldn't do it.'
Excited about this.
Then, this week, charity shop! Who can resist at £1.99...?
A modern classic. I think the copy I read before must have been a library book as I don't have it, but I re-watched the film the other night - Scarlett Johansson still blows my mind - and then bumped into this copy, so it seemed like fate.
Everything I've heard about Megan Abbott has been unanimously wonderful, so I'm itching to get into this, and then maybe search out Dare Me, her most recent one, which featured on The Million's Most Anticipated Listearlier this year.
I bought Vikram Seth's An Equal Music because I will be absolutely bereft when A Suitable Boy ends. *sob* I hope this is just as rich, moving and epic.
The purchasing of Daughter of the River: An Autobiography by Hong Ying proves yet again that Asia has a huge pull on my imagination, and that comparing something to 'Wild Swans' is the best way to get me to buy anything at all :)
