Moonlighting

I am writing the odd guest review on the fantastic collaborative book review initiative started by Erin and Ria, The Bloggers' Bookshelf.

My first review got published today, and it's embarassingly light on review, and heavy on the rant - I've totally forgotten how to write reviews! My English teacher would be so disappointed... However, if you would like to read a grumble on a book I was actually embarrassed I read, then here it is!

There's a whole host of fantastic reviews of a wide range of books already - perfect in the run up to Christmas and lining up the holiday reading!

Rabbit Reading

Quentin Blake, Matilda

As you all may know, books are a huge part of my life - both in terms of work and fun. Last week, I ordered all my reading for the Christmas holidays - the time of year, apart from holidays proper, when  I allow myself much more time than usual on reading for pleasure. (Last year, I finished Wicked in three days.) And they've all arrived, all crisp, pretty paperbacks. I'm not sure I can replace the feeling of stacking up shiny new books (and secondhand gems) with the immediacy but virtual nature of Kindle-books. I've been going back and forth on Kindles, and I still cannot decide! I love the physicality of books - this afternoon I was sat cross-legged on my sofa, with a cup of tea and a huge history hardback cropped on my knees. I felt a deep sense of contentment, just like Matilda (surely the best ode to reading ever, including Walter Benjamin's essay "Unpacking My Library").

I've agonised about it so much I wish I'd just been given one rather than having to commit to the purchase myself. I can't quite bring myself to buy one myself!

Anyway, this is all a bit of a tangent to what I'd intended to write about, which was a short run down of what I'm reading at the moment, and what turned up in my little Amazon order of joy.

Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India

I say currently reading, but it's actually waiting for me at the British Library to be read later in the week. And I say 'read' but I'm not sure anyone's ever read this book (or many of his Subaltern Studies colleagues' works) cover-to-cover. Still, it gives you an idea of the stuff I have to read for work.

John Marriott, Beyond the Tower: A History of East London

I'm reading this as background for a project I'm working on on diaspora, religious faith and East London - but it's so well-put together and fascinating that it scarcely feels like work!

William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Bedtime reading at my mum's when I'm staying there during the week for work. I've read this countless times, and I still laugh out loud at points, and am completely charmed by this cult novel. If you've not read it but seen the film, you MUST read the book. It's so much better, and I love the film.

Jonathon L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

Bedtime reading at my house. I'm coming to the end of this second novel in the series, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'll be ordering the third. But more of that in a proper review soon!

Awaiting me over the holidays are:

Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London and Moon over Soho

Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches (the one I'm most excited about I think - I mean, magical academia??? written for me!)

Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie (came upon a report of the real menagerie this novel is based upon in my research the other day, and had to add this to my order - it counts as research, right?)

Safia Minney, Naked Fashion: The New Sustainable Fashion Revolution - from first glance, perhaps not as text-heavy as I'd hoped but I hope it'll be an interesting introduction to People Tree and to the world of sustainable fashion, which I'm getting interested in both in terms of my buying choices and possible projects.

So, that's a few of the books in my life and the moment, and coming up. I'll do a review of the fun books as and when I finish them - the Cabal novel should hopefully be up very soon! (I really want it finished and done with!)

Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

As a lover of fantasy writing I'm a little surprised that I've only read this book so very recently. I love the film of The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the most glorious example of the magical possibilities of Technicolor, and my childhood was haunted by the utterly terrifying 1980s sequel Return to Oz (not a children's film, in my opinion!) I've always been obsessed with red glitter heels (and am the proud owner of my own pair).

The truth is, I've picked up Wicked on many a bookshop-browsing trip. I could feel myself getting drawn in each time I did, but I put it down because I wanted to save it for a special occasion. I read all the time, for work and play, but rarely get the opportunity to read just one novel for pleasure from morning to evening, days in a row. That is a treat I only get when I'm on holiday or set aside time for myself.

So I picked this book to read over Christmas. I ended up being both happy and slightly rueful with my choice.

I've not read the original book of The Wizard of Oz, so I perhaps don't get all the intricacies of Maguire's rewriting. But I was truly captivated by his vision of Oz and world beyond, a raw, cruel, unjust world, yet not without its own primitive magic. The character Elphaba, the "Wicked Witch of the West" is rendered as a complex, embattled figure, both intensely sympathetic and at times incredibly frustrating as a protagonist. The story is a powerful allegory on the nature of 'wickedness' (political corruption, abuse of discrimination of Others, betrayals by loved ones) and the experience of being Other in a strictly ordered society. The novel wears its intentions on its sleeve - breaking off to ruminate at points on the possibility of redemption, of the nature of sin, and the role of religion. I sighed a bit at these points (I don't like novels that spell things out for me) but I wasn't excessively put off by it, because I was very intrigued as to where Maguire was taking his story.

There are many strands to Maguire's ambitious novel, both in terms of plot and theme. It is a disjointed, fragmented affair - the story jumps about in time and space, with only Elphaba holding the thing together. As I read further on and the pages remaining began to diminish, I started to feel increasingly uneasy. How was he going to resolve all the many stories he had started? How would everything fit in place? WHERE WAS DOROTHY?

The last tenth of this novel is frenetic. Dorothy arrives, worlds fall apart, old lost friends reappear or cannot, and Elphaba starts to find out who she is. You can almost feel Maguire's desperation to finish (perhaps for an overbearing publisher?) and of course it doesn't realise the scale of its initial ambition. Yet in many ways this is a novel about failure and disappointment, so this is strangely apt.

It's a powerful, tragic and moving novel. It goes to the painful heart of the original story of Oz (a story after all of not belonging, of feeling inadequate, of the grief and terror of losing home and family), and lays it bare. (It's partly why I was rueful about reading this over the holidays: it's not the cosiest of holiday reads!) Maguire's imagining of Elphaba is one of the best female fantasy protagonists I've read in a while: brittle, brave, vulnerable and awe-inspiringly strong and defiant.

I enjoyed this novel very much, but like its protagonist it is not without its flaws. I recommend it on that basis, for patient readers who appreciate fantasy stories for the journey as much as the final destination.

On a final note, I'm going to see the musical soon. I'm very intrigued to know how they've adapted the novel!

The Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh

I love Amitav Ghosh's novels, and have managed to get The Shadow Lines onto every postcolonial option I've taught (to me, there's no better novel on the tragedy of Partition). I clutched The Glass Palace to me for several days after finishing it (during reading it I became so absorbed that I missed my stop on several train journeys, kept forgetting things and had to restrict myself to reading it at bedtime only for fear of what other troubles it might've got me into.) I love his impeccable attention to historical detail, his lyrical style and the way he creates epics of empire that span continents and are yet so deeply personal and believable. As a result, I was breathless with excitement at the prospect of hearing him talk on the issue of diaspora at the LSE last year for the Runnymede Trust. The Sea of Poppies had been on my shelf for some time, awaiting the right opportunity. I thought the talk would be a perfect prologue.

However, the talk was a disappointment. Ghosh spoke in woolliest, most idealistic terms about migration, as a form of transnational community, a world without restrictive, exclusivist borders, a world of infinite possibility. He tied his argument to the research he had undertaken for The Sea of Poppies, arguing that the sailors who used to traffic opium and the goods of empire were a ragtag bunch of multiple nationalities and religions who nonetheless "got along." Those left at home, he said, were "unfortunate," but could still dream of other places because of the adventures of their more courageous kin.

The whole talk sat uncomfortably with the reason for the lecture: the launch of a major project on Bengali oral history in London titled Banglastories. Anyone at all familiar with Bengali (or indeed, any) migrant narratives knows that Ghosh's take on migration is unbelievably rose-tinted. In particular, the lascars of whom Ghosh writes, worked in the very worst conditions on East India company ships, and died in their thousands on ships during the first and second World Wars. And they've hardly been recognised in official naval histories.

Which is why I had such hopes for The Sea of Poppies: a chance to tell the story of those who have been excluded from the historical record, to imagine their lives and experiences in a way we can't do in historical research because of the sheer absence of material. But although it is a fantastic yarn of a novel,  it is just that: fantastic. The unlikely set of characters that end up on this boat just do not convince. Throughout, Ghosh's desperation to create an imagined alternative sense of community to nation-based ones is all too evident: for example, in the passage describing a wedding on the ship, when all the "coolies," regardless of caste or village, become a "family." It's an embarrassingly laboured section where the author's ideological intention drives the narrative, and clumsily. Usually Ghosh is a master of entwining history and literary grace, but here the historical research is hammered home, at the expense of well-drawn characters. I didn't share Ghosh's own joy in the nautical Hindi-English hybrid that peppers the pages, which I just found annoyingly excessive. And there's a hint of intrusive magical realism too in one sub-plot of this novel that just shouldn't be in a Ghosh novel.

That said, it was immense fun to read. Ghosh has enough skill as an author to keep you compelled even when he's at slapdash form and his dreams overtake his plotting. I sped through 500 pages in a matter of a fortnight. Each night, I looked forward to picking it up again. And now I've finished, although not filled with the sense of aching loss that I usually am when I finish a Ghosh novel, I did just google "second part of the Ibis trilogy," which should indicate how willing I am to be on board again (I thought I could resist the urge for a nautical pun in this review, alas not). Just don't take this in the vein of a regular Ghosh novel: historical it ain't. But a lot of fun, it is.

A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

I attended a talk by Vikram Seth last year, and was utterly smitten with his writerly charm, wicked sense of humour and his ability to still make coherent sense after consuming a whole bottle of red wine on the LSE stage. It made me want to re-read A Suitable Boy, and to find Beastly Tales, a compendium of grisly and funny poems Seth wrote about animals that I desperately want to read to my children, when I have them. The first I've now accomplished, the second I've yet to do.

I read A Suitable Boy when I was finishing my A-levels. I was utterly engrossed and finished it in a matter of a fortnight. (I also dropped it onto my breakfast plate, and broke it. The plate. The book is very hardy indeed). Having discovered that a sequel, A Suitable Girl is coming out (in 2013!), I thought now would be a good time for a return visit to Seth's 1950s' India.

Seth has mentioned that returning to Lata's world was like meeting old friends again. And that's how I initially felt when I started re-reading ASB. In fact my memories of my feelings when reading it the first time came rushing back - and I felt the same fondness for Amit, the same affectionate irritation with Lata's mother's sentimentality, and the same crush on Firoz.

But this time, it took me over three months to read it (in my defence I did read a few books in between!) I was conscious that as with Middlemarch, my impatient teen-self skipped some of the long political passages (the shame) and I think most of the details of the land reforms Seth painstakingly outlines eluded me. So I took my time, and concentrated.

As a 17 year old, I had felt the injustice of Lata and Kabir's forced separation due to religion very keenly. (I had a bit of a crush on Kabir, too...) But somehow, this time, Kabir seemed like a cipher of a character. Everything about him was good and plausible, and yet, somehow he was blank. I thus shrugged my shoulders at their separation this time, rather than weeping (I was even more given to weeping as a teenager). And although I understand the point of Seth's intricate detailing of politics, after a while, I once again felt the urge to skip passages. This time, however, I think this was due to the book's fictionalisation of history - it was hard to care about a made-up town, made-up riots, made-up political rivalries. The narrator's ironic detachment compounded this. I think it would have been more effective if it had been an orthodox historical novel, and had much more political power.

I also realised that the structure and substance of this novel - despite its volume - is flimsy. Each 4-5 page section is a vignette, with its own symbolic values and codes, yet beyond plot developments there are few aesthetic or symbolic strands that connect them. It's not a complex novel, just a big one. It's a lot of fun, definitely, and at points observations regarding the tensions between the secular and communa,l and the suffering of Dalits under pre-land reform conditions, are sobering. But overall, it is frivolous, whimsical, and lightweight.  Even, occasionally, irritating. (The throwing together of classical music, poetry and mathematics made me want to roll my eyes, so clearly did Seth want this novel to be a mixture of All His Favourite Things).

But still, my favourite parts - the parts set in Calcutta, and amongst Meenakshi's eccentric family, - are still my favourites. (But that might be because I'm still Bengali). And I enjoyed it enough to see it through to its 11??th page, unlike Bartimaeus who gave up in irritation and disgust.

Of course, I will read A Suitable Girl when it comes out (and I look forward to it). But I don't think I'll be revisiting A Suitable Boy again anytime soon. He's just not right for me anymore.

a list of things I'd like

Lots of links!

• the Glee soundtrack - I'm waiting for the show to go on hiatus next week, when I'll be lost and pouting for its return
• OPI Pamplona Purple, after my gorgeous friend Naima sent me a pic of her mani from NY!
• pretty much the entire Art Supplies pencil collection from MAC (so relieved I have built up some vouchers for this!): particulalrly Greengrease, Slick Black, Dirty, Below Ground, Black Line and Undercurrent!
• Misa Dirty Sexy Money, a murky sea green polish, as I want to up my non-purple shades
• Also China Glaze Emerald Sparkle (even though Bartimaeus is DEFINITELY going to call me Grotbags when I wear it!)
• and China Glaze Atlantis
• and Poshe topcoat because I think Seche Vite is ruining my nails
• OPI Nail Envy to sort this out
• a bando style hairband with a cream lace corsage - the way I'll be doing the Chanel monochrome look this season on the cheap
• a roomy but not huge leather cross-body bag (one I can put a book in!), have been considering a Cambridge Satchel Company satchel in red
• some pretty new dresses with quirky prints - nearly tempted by this dress with hot air balloons on it but it's blue which doesn't suit me 
• to reread A Suitable Boy after Vikram Seth's wonderful talk and news there's to be a sequel, A Suitable Girl(!)
• quality time with friends and family
• some luck for my beloved and brilliant Bartimaeus

What's on your list?

Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie

I have seven books I consider to be my desert island, holy grail, favourite books of all time. I define them by the quality of writing: where one sentence after another leaves you so breathless with its beauty and brilliance, that you want to underline the whole darn thing (I'm an underliner). The books that you carry around with you for some time after you've finished them, simply because you can't bear to part with them just yet. (Mine are: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Amitav Ghosh's Shadow Lines, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. And yes, there's a lot of American fiction in there, I know.)

Burnt Shadows, a novel that traces the interconnected lives of two families, and in doing so encompasses Nagasaki, partition, and the Afghan war, had moments of that kind of brilliance and beauty, moments that had me scrabbling for a pen and ruler (I always use a ruler). But at the same time, there were the kinds of sentences that are very obviously designed to get a reader scrabbling for a pen - over-written, with unnecessarily extended images, nestling uncomfortably with the rest of the prose and dialogue. Ones where you can visualise the author sitting back with a smug satisfied air, thinking, ah yes, that'll get them. There's a fine line between the two, and it's a subjective one. But when I come across these latter sentences, I just bristle with irritation (I did a lot of this whilst reading God of Small Things. Heck, I was just one irritated bristling thing throughout). And the spell is broken.

So I can't quite join in the critical frenzy that has occurred over this novel. This isn't to say it's not good - it really is, and at points I was moved to tears, hissed with anger, and at several points, really physically wanted to shake one of the characters. I'm also intellectually intrigued by it: it's a fascinating tale of migrations - but unlike some postcolonial texts, Shamsie's rendition of migration is the very opposite of celebratory. Her characters are forced to move, and hate doing so. They adapt, for sure, but she demonstrates how adaption exists alongside sadness and loss that do not dissipate with time. She also sets up an international network of people that span India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Japan and New York, but again, at no point does this seem a joyous example of globalisation, but is fraught and tragic, resulting in as many misunderstandings as insights into cultural difference. And the novel's denouement is devastating, and politically savage.

But it's just not quite brilliant. I'm a hard reader to please, perhaps, but there's just too much uninspired dialogue, with the odd overwritten sentence thrown in to pep it up. It's a shame, because the novel's vision is really quite ambitious, and Shamsie obviously has the skill to have written the entirety of it very well. So I bristle as much in irritation about what this novel could have been as I do over its odd overwritten sentence.

To Be Read 2010

I thought I'd make a list of all the books I've bought and been given recently that are waiting to be read this year. I've just finished re-reading Harry Potter 7 and can't decide which of these to read next...

Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie
The Wind on Fire Trilogy, William Nicholson
The Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury
Shadowmancer, G. P. Taylor
The Black Magician Trilogy, Trudi Canavan
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Hmm. Am leaning towards Shamsie because I read this piece on an upcoming exhibition I'm looking forward to seeing, and I thought it was beautifully written:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jan/06/bangladesh-pakistan-india-photography

The Book of Lost Things, John Connolly

I finished this book yesterday. It was another serendipitous charity shop find, and I confess that I was initially attracted to it because of its Rob Ryan-illustrated cover (one of my favourite graphic artists). But on further inspection, it turned out that the book including its charming, quirky cover and graphics could have had "For the Postcolonial Rabbit" written all over it in Rob Ryan's lovely handwriting. An adult fairytale about childhood grief, featuring a dark, often terrifying fantasy world that draws heavily on Grimm's Fairytales, Angela Carter and Hans Christian Andersen, this was just my cup of tea.

Actually, in parts, it was too scary for me and I had several nightmares during the course of reading. (I am a wuss when it comes to horror and scary stuff in general and probably shouldn't have read it so late at night just before sleeping). Yesterday, in the final pages, Bartimaeus called me and I jumped out of my skin!

I did enjoy it though - and I suppose I'm starting to understand why some modes of terror can be pleasurable (I've never been able to understand that, until Pan's Labyrinth came along. I've always refused to watch scary films but I can't resist its dark, tragic beauty, and it is one of my favourite films). Anyway, The Book of Lost Things is in a similar vein, and I think it would make an incredible Guillermo del Toro film. There were some episodes in this novel that I think would make for fantastic cinema.

But it's the episodic, quest-orientated nature of the novel that I also found somewhat wanting. The story follows David, a boy grieving for his mother in WW2 England, into a dark alternate world, where he has to complete a quest to find the Book of Lost Things, and find his way home. On his way, David meets both friends and horrific, terrifying foes. I think the strongest part of the novel were the fairytales that David stumbles into, which were wonderfully realised. Whilst the overarching narrative structure was weak (I didn't feel that David's journey was particularly urgent, and the connection between the two worlds was laboured rather than executed with the panache exhibited by China Mieville in Un Lun Dun) the fairytales had a tightness of form that made me wonder if the novel had been produced from a series of short stories strung somewhat clumsily together. In addition, the prose, striving to be pared and simplistic, is often merely workmanlike, and this renders what could have been truly wondrous merely a fun ride. Connolly is no Carter. While there's darkness a-plenty, the magic is scant.

As a result, although the novel is about coming to terms with the death of a parent, I didn't feel as moved as I think I should have done (particularly given I've lived through this experience recently). In fact, I think Rowling renders grief and the process of living with it, with more emotional clarity. But for the grownup fairy stories, and the illustrations, overall, I would recommend this to fans of fantasy fiction. Connolly's is a dark, nightmarish world that is interesting to visit, even if one isn't compelled to remain.

Black Forest Gateau - Remixed

Let me start as I mean to go on. With cake:




I made this on Sunday for my sister's birthday. She’s a cherry/chocolate fiend and I usually make her Nigella’s delicious chocolate-cherry cupcakes for her birthday, but we all fancied a change this year. This is a “Chocolate Dipped Cherry Cake,” and features a chocolate chip sponge and a white chocolate and fresh cherry filling and topping. I found the recipe here:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1838/chocolate-dipped-cherry-cake

I’ve amended it a little. My version features a vanilla sponge heavy on grated and chopped dark chocolate because I think milk is too sweet for baking. I’ve also replaced 20g of sugar and the what I considered an odd addition of mashed banana with 100g of fresh halved and stone cherries and 40g of cherry jam (I'd add more fresh cherries I think if I made it again, they were a delicious addition). It turned out rather well I think (I made it on Sunday and it was all gone by Monday evening, and it was enormous!)

In other news, I had a fantastic charity-shop book haul today. Unlike my great friend Geeky Weirdo Chick (see blog), whose awesome charity shop fashion finds I remain in deep awe of, I have no luck on the secondhand clothes front. Sometimes Ebay, when I'm looking for a specific item, but not the happened-upon-find. I'm not sure why. Books, on the other hand, I'm very good at sourcing secondhand. So today I have purchased, for the grand sum of £5.50:





The End of the Peace Process, Edward W. Said

Said's work was formative for me during my undergrad years. My favourite text of his is After the Last Sky, which is a beautiful work of prose-poetry and photographs on Palestine. But I also love his political writing, so I'm pleased to have found this collection.







The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai

I've been meaning to read this for some time! I'm a sucker for novels set in South Asia (I've just finished Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace which was stunning, and I'm currently reading Indra Sinha's Animal's People).






Abhorsen, Garth Nix

I'm aware this is the third of a trilogy but I've already read them, and am sure I'll come by the other two in time (or via Amazon Marketplace...)

I recommend the trilogy thoroughly to fans of fantasy - I prefer it to the Keys of the Kingdom series, and I'll confess it scared me silly on more than one occasion!




Off to watch Ugly Betty now!