December reading

Happy New Year!

To begin with, I am a bit disappointed that I didn’t finish my Goodreads Reading Challenge. I’d pledged to read 25 non-school books during the year. In the end, I managed twenty.
Oh well, 25 remains the target for 2017!

I’ll feature five books this time, even though (technically) one of them was finished yesterday, in January.

The first is Haynes Explains Babies

Now, even though I’m not a parent, this book had me in stitches. It’s a light-hearted, completely irreverant manual for the stages of ‘baby’.

It’s a short book, part of the Haynes series which also covers pensioners, teenagers, marriage etc. I will definitely be considering these books as fun gifts for friends in future. And, if anyone knows a parent-to- be, I wholly recommend Haynes Explains Babies as something to prepare them in the best possible way for their imminent arrival.

 

The second book is The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

This year we decided to give Christmas Eve books. We read about it being an Icelandic (?) tradition to give a book and chocolate on Christmas Eve and spend the evening reading. We love books (and chocolate – naturally), so this seemed like a lovely idea to adopt. The Reader on the 6.27 is the book I received.

The first thing that I noticed was the beautiful cover. It’s almost as though it was written for Christmas. (The story has nothing to do with Christmas.)

Guylain Vignolles works in a factory which pulps books. He hates almost all aspects of his job, except at the end of the day when he cleans the pulping machine and surreptitiously rescues any pages which have been spared the jaws of the machine. It is these random pages which Guylain reads to his fellow passengers on the 6:27 train he catches to work each morning. Guylain is trapped in this mundane routine until the day he makes for his usual seat on the train and finds a USB stick containing a diary.

There are vast leaps of convenience in this story and some incredibly larger-than-life characters, such as the elderly, obsessive Delacote sisters; the guard who only speaks in Alexandrines, and the former employee who is stubbornly determined to reclaim his legs. Nevertheless, Didierlaurent has written a captivating tale about the power of stories to transport us to another world; to allow us to escape the humdrum. I am really pleased that Didierlaurent allowed the reader to become one of the passengers on the 6.27 too, allowed us to experience the stories Guylain read to us rather than simply be told that “Guylain Vignolles read the first page”.

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Amelie (which I’ve also just learned is actually a book! – I love the film)

As an aside, the book which I gifted on Christmas Eve was The Muse by Jesse Burton.

The third book was After Dark by Haruki Murakami

I tried to start this book in November and really struggled. I’m not sure why because I love Murakami. He really is my go-to author when I can’t decide what to read next.

After Dark tells the story of Tokyo after midnight through two strands embodied by the sisters Mari and Eri. Around midnight academic Mari can be found alone in a cafe, reading a book. Meanwhile, beautiful model Eri is sleeping and has been for the past two months. As we follow Mari she encounters young trombonist Takahashi, helps a chinese prostitute who has been attacked, and meets the owner and cleaning team of the Love Hotel- a venue which seems to become the focal point of Mari’s story.

In Eri’s room, however, a TV which isn’t connected at the wall sparks into life. Everytime we revisit the room the picture has gained more clarity until, eventually, we see a man in a mask staring at the sleeping Eri. As the night develops, the line between the TV room and Eri’s room blurs and it is here where Murakami weaves his magic as he does so brilliantly in books such as Kafka on the Shore.

I love Murakami’s work because he writes people so well. His characters are human. I appreciate their concerns and can recognise their worries. This is why I loved Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart so much. I enjoy how he depicts the side of a city which is often ignored. Eqaully, I love the magic he injects into some of his books. However, I didn’t enjoy After Dark as much as others. I felt I wanted to know more about Mari and was frustrated when the story flicked back to Eri and her TV entrapment.

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The Tiny Wife – Andrew Kaufmann
South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami
The Tiger’s Wife – Tea Obreht

The fourth book was The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories by Susan Hill

I’ll start by being honest: I don’t like ghost stories. I find them predictable. However, after reading The Woman in Black earlier in the year, I thought I’d give Susan Hill another shot. I quite enjoyed how she built the suspense and her imagery in The Woman in Black and hoped for more of the same with The Travelling Bag.

There are four stories in the collection, the first is The Travelling Bag which I was intrigued by until the typos/mistakes appeared. I’m sure these are mistakes, rather than just me mis-reading, but it lead me to spending the rest of the story annoyed and second guessing whether each word actually was the right one. I make typos in this blog and, of course, mistakes happen; but this book must have passed by the eyes of many people before it was published – typos in published novels/story collections aren’t really acceptable.

This put me in a bit of negative frame of mind for the rest of the collection. Although it isn’t littered with mistakes, it did fall into the trap of predictable. The reviews of this collection claim that a selling point is Hill’s ability to set the horrific within such everyday settings. Unfortunately, with short stories, there isn’t the room to emphasis the everyday so the ‘horrific’ isn’t as shocking. I also find it really hard to suspend my disbelief when dealing with the supernatural.

If you’re into ghost stories, you’ll really enjoy this. The cover is beautiful and ‘Alice Baker’ has some of the brilliant description of the kind I’d enjoyed in The Woman in Black. However, The Travelling Bag was always going to be starting out on the back foot with me and, unfortunately, it just didn’t cut it.

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The Turn of the Screw – Henry James

The final book which I’m sneaking on to December reading is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

Almost to my shame, this was my first foray into Hemingway. Will I be revisiting? Maybe.

In short, an old poor fisherman has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. On the eighty-fifth day, he sets out to sea to go further than the other fishermen where, eventually, he catches a fish which drags his little boat further and further out to sea. The old fisherman has a few days at sea being towed by the fish. He ponders on the nobility of the fish, on his own capabilities and strength, his own determination versus that of the fish.

It has been described as a literary masterpiece and a comment on the strength of perseverence and human triumph over adversity. Personally, I think the fisherman was greedy and foolish. In his bid to have it all, he almost lost everything.

I wasn’t blown away by this book. It’s ok. For a first visit, I’ve not been alienated by Hemingway’s style so perhaps I’ll try something a bit longer (and grittier) next time.

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Honestly, I’m struggling here. Perhaps Moby Dick. I’ll come back to this when I’ve read more.