Across the week

Catching up on this week’s events with John Prescott’s rather dull choice of music and self deprecation on Desert Island Discs. Hopefully Woman’s Hour will bring more items of interest –women and cotton is promised, and ironing!!

Spring has arrived this week, a hint of warmth during our continuation of the Thames Path walk, this time from Kingston to Walton. The path runs close to the river so we had swans for company –adults flying higher than I thought they could, followed by youngsters still not quite white that stayed close to the river then too a rest in the mud banks. And yesterday was really warm, so nice to go out into a warmish evening on my way to play bridge … not quite abandon coat but certainly scarf redundant weather.

Slower tasks this week included the satisfaction of finishing a quilt,  nearly finishing the jacket I’ve been knitting with yarn that I dyed in January and reflecting on the failure of my sonnet to please in the on-line course. Work to do there then but this weeks assignment is very different and involves a random ward generator.That feels like play, followed by hard work

Finally, have just started reading Swimming Home by Deborah Levy … a small book, easy to hold when its still cool enough to need snuggle under the covers.

Book review: State of Wonder

How good it was to be absorbed into another of Ann Patchett’s stories, alongside some strong characters, at a cracking pace and a confidence that the pages would give good reading value from start to finish. There is a great deal of simplicity in this book –a death, a search, people who act as you would expect them to  - but that goes hand in hand with a narrative that invites the reader to fill in obvious gaps and had me wanting to get back to the story each time I had to leave it for a while.
The geography feels authentic, the heat as oppressive as I remember it on my visit to the Amazon and illness is described competently, always from the sick person’s perspective. I was surprised by the quantity of insect life Marina encountered but that was probably because these were remarkable by their absence during my boat  trip on the Rio Negra.
The ending disappointed just a little by solving the obvious in a way that was just little hard to believe. After all dying of a fever in Amazonia is not unusual but much was left unsaid in the last pages about relationships between the key characters. I see another book there.

Book group view of Alfred and Emily

My book group rarely agrees wholeheartedly, and to a person, on anything … be it book, what to drink, where to meet –we’ve eclectic tastes that lead to lively discussions What more could we want. Alfred and Emily was the exception that proved the rule: we all agreed. Agreed about the incoherence, lack of depth, failure to engage and wondered about the wisdom  of writing memoir with the strong possibility of being recognised as a very unreliable narrator.

Enough said on that, this morning I had the joy of starting a new book, plucked  from my to be read basket. One chapter in I can’t wait to get back to Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder. I really enjoyed her writing in Bel Canto and she knows how to plot. 

Off to amazon now to see if I can find books recommended last night –The Summer of the Bear and Before I Go To Sleep are on the list. I realise that my to be read basket operates on a one out and two in at the moment –looking forward to some down time at home in France in about 4 weeks to read some of them, or I’ll have search out a bigger basket.

Book review: Alfred and Emily

I began Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing (a book group read) with great expectations –after all, she’s a Nobel Laureate and way back I had read, enjoyed and learnt from The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook. There’s a key problem with any sort of expectation and I met it … my expectations were unmet.

Blake Morrison writing in the Guardian says this book is a ‘bold experiment’ –sadly the experiment failed, but it was bold and perhaps also reckless of Lessing to write in a haphazard, incoherent way. It certainly had raw emotion, as the Sunday Telegraph reviewer noted, but Lessing does nothing with that emotion except repeat it. Surely there was an opportunity to seek an understanding in the hate and anger that invaded the narrative.  

A. S. Byatt wrote that the book ‘makes us think about the moral and emotional power of different ways of telling a story’ Was this a kind way of saying the one positive thing about the book, I wonder. It was certainly different and maybe Lessing in another time, or another author, could have used the idea of turning fact to fiction and then back again to better effect. In Alfred and Emily --good title—the execution is  unsuccessful

Yes, as the Observer, noted, the book is extraordinary –in its lack of coherence, un-engaging prose and characterisation that destroys rather than builds on the people used for the fantasy Lessing devises.

I feel cheated to have expected so much and got so little, except confirmation that good writing is hard even for the most experienced and lauded. And I’ve learnt a little more about what can happen to my expectations! Am I the only person to find this book so disappointing? More on this tomorrow after the book group meeting.

Five went to the poetry seminar

with five poems for the critical eye of each other and our expert poet Tamar Yoseloff. We had an unusually lively discussion, mostly linked to interpretation. The concept of what a poem is about is as important as looking at aspects like its form, rhyme and rhythm and so on … or perhaps some would argue the opposite. Comments welcome.

Anyway, today two of the poems we looked at (mine was one) produced starkly contrasting ‘readings’ about a key feature: birth and death for one, a young child and an elderly woman in another. It was good to pull at each of these poems to find what led to the stretch  of these interpretations; a post modern stance would say it is all in the mind/eye of the reader anyway. Its always good for me to hear what my words mean to the reader … there’s often things there that I have failed to see and certainly have not explicitly written about. 

The other three poems all added to my knowledge of the world as well as to my understanding of poetry. I now know something about Medea –a rather nasty woman it seems, about the experiences of a Hungarian poet during the repression and the rarity of pelicans on the Danube.  Also good today to read two long poems. Length has been another feature of our discussions recently and that has led me to extending one of my early ‘short poem’ drafts to 70 lines! One for the long poem magazine when they open their doors for submissions in March.

What a joyful way to learn … now I need to turn my attention to the last assignment for the no surprises on line course. With my sonnet safely up-loaded, I think I’m going to have a go at writing with words from the Random Word Generator –the challenge is (again) the demand of the form … ten words, three 8 line poems, and its all in the order of those words. More on this later … its not going to be easy but then it never is.

Some days are working days!

and today was one of those. Just finished drafting an editorial and before lunch,did reviews of three journal papers –the very good, the needs revision and the dreadful. Usual mix and it feels great to be able to cross through some tasks that have been on my to do list for far too long.I’ll go back to the editorial when all the papers for that edition are in, revising it to point the way to each one and hopefully, comment on their individual contributions to the overall message.

Time now to turn to non work. I’ve a turtle in the making once I learnt how to applique without my stitches showing, The quilt I’ve been sewing is nearly ready, long delay with the order for the backing fabric –apparently winter colds and weather to blame. But its now safely with Jane to be quilted and I’ll have time to do the binding. The lesson is to start these projects earlier, of course.

Tomorrow it's my London poetry seminar so I’m off to look in the poetry stash for one that needs the critical eye of others.  There’s plenty to choose from ……

Review: The Ladykillers

There was a full house for yesterday’s matinee of The Ladykillers, currently playing at the Gielgud Theatre –a slick, funny and fast moving drama that was originally a classic Ealing comedy, Criminal oddballs, a vague, innocent but insightful elderly woman and  a very inventive set made for a vibrant mix of farce, pathos and inevitability. A great suggestion for one of my regular meet ups  with three friends, followed by a very good choice of where to eat. The Criterion served some great food, under a brilliant ceiling, and the staff knew what they were doing. Somewhere to return to when in theatre-land again.

The day began and ended with a brisk walk along a few of London’s wide streets, full of history although this time no sight seeing  -we kept going at a a good pace to keep warm in the arctic temperatures. We had to scrape the car free from ice once back in the suburbs –slightly warmer today with some cloud cover.

Book review: The Loft by Marlen Hanshofer

Translated from German this book helped me to understand what is meant by interiority with its single viewpoint and deep drill into the mind of the narrator –a woman, a wife, a mother, a friend, someone trying to find her self as she nears the last years of her life. Its one week in her life with a back story inserted in a way that didn't quite satisfy this reader … but that apart, the writing is engaging, disturbing, and original. I’m about the order her other book The Wall –apparently a feminist classic… more on that much later as I’m now going to start Doris Lessing's Alfred & Emily for book group next week. Might find I’m still part way through when we meet!
Writing this with the brilliance of the sun and snow pouring through the windows. But its cheek pinchingly cold out there so I need to decide how many layers I can wear to keep warm walking across Waterloo Bridge later on. I’ll be on my way to see The Ladykillers with three very dear girlfriends. Comment on that next time I’m here.

Snow outside: poetry witing inside

It looks very pretty outside but the snow is fading now ... with the roads and pavements predicted to be icy as the temperature drops overnight. I've had a poetry day, warm and quiet. Five poems sent out into the world and several attempts at my next assignment ... a sonnet and a love poem! No pressure then to find all those rhymes and to keep to the rhythm. Don Paterson's Sonnets book has come in handy -so far I have four lines and a possible closing couplet.

As you can see my bedside reading includes this year's T S Eliot prize winner  ... haven't come across a sonnet yet but Burnside has some readable poems ...and some that I will need to go back to but that's the joy of a poetry collection. The book opens with a long poem, so I've saved that for later and started with the section called Everafter .. possibilities, failure, loss are all in there so far.

Learning to blog: reading

I've learnt lots about blogs since I began this one last summer –by irregularly reading other people’s blogs and writing this one, again irregularly. No surprises there then –experiential learning wins again.

So now I have some key links in the blog header which will direct readers to certain pages like the ones about books I'd like to read, what I am reading now and books I’ve read. You’ll see a mixed list of books to be read, and reading now in a side bar as well. Some will linger on that list for a while, rather as they set up home on my bedside chest of drawers or on the side table next to my favourite reading chair.

My aim is to post thoughts on the reading in progress, very short reviews and comments made at the two book groups I belong to. Yes, I know that’s lots of reading but that’s not hard for me and because I want to read other books and –and this is important – to develop my practice of reading poetry I’m keen to find reading time when I am alert. In other words, not just before I put out the bedside light! I’m not going to beat myself up if this does not happen every day, The aim is a few days a week … I’ll report on progress as and when.

I’ll tag the reviews and comments so readers can just see these if they feel they will be bored by accounts of my sewing or poetry news. This is first like this and, would you believe it, the internet connexion from my modem is having a very long sleep in this morning, so thank goodness for Windows Live Writer … I’ll save this to send later after what I’m sure is going to be another gruelling session in the gym with super fit Sam. On the plus side she’s great at the stretching … and I will feel better afterwards.