Books I Haven't Read Yet

To-read Tyranny

2008-12-12T01:59:00.009Z

Sam Jordison wrote about the tyranny of the to-read pile on his Guardian blog earlier this week, reminding me that I have been neglecting mine. (Although, there is a lot of blog-neglect about - even Sam has been neglecting his, so that makes me feel better. And no-one reads blogs anyway.)

Sam's lament is a familiar one to us all, I suspect. "Already," he says, in a sentence which bears the whiff of a man who has read more Jane Austen than is wise, "I have intentions to read more books than I can hope to manage in a normal lifetime."

He had been by roused another blogger (bookninja) who, echoing an article by Cynthia Crossen, the Wall Street Journal's resident booklover, suggested that "instead of going out and buying more books you fully-intend-to but are-not-going-to read, why not examine your shelves for ones that slipped through the cracks and feel lonely and neglected."

Coincidentally, I have recently been thoroughly examining my own shelves, in order to enter all mybooks into the database at goodreads.com (Although I do feel a tad guilty at not paying the pittance asked by the wonderful librarything to enter them all there.)

I have managed to select from the hundreds of books on the to-read shelf, a few dozen must-reads - those that I really, really want to read, but haven't...yet.

So I'm in no position to give advice on tackling the tyranny of to-read pile, but I can confirm that the one thing you Must. Not. Do. is go to the library - all those free books! - not least in case you find yourself face-to-face with a shiny new book-about-books - which is the mistake I made today. Thus, not only do I have another book to read, but it's a book full of other books to-read - 229 of them in total, courtesy:
The Rough Guide to Classic Novels
from Don Quixote to American Pastoral

Thank you very much Simon Mason.
Although, since you are also the author of a book called Lives of the Dog-Stranglers, I will forgive you.

Richard & Judy Book Club 2007

2007-01-05T03:25:00.000Z

The eight titles chosen for this year's Richard & Judy Book Club have been announced, they are:

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Restless - William Boyd
This Book Will Save Your Life - AM Homes
Love in the Present Tense - Catherine Ryan Hyde
The Girls - Lori Lansens
Semi-Detached - Griff Rhys Jones
The Testament of Gideon Mack - James Robertson
The Interpretation of Murder - Jed Rubenfeld

So that's eight more books I haven't read yet.

Predictably, the bookies have made the most famous author (William Boyd) the favourite to win, but my instincts lean towards AM Homes - mainly because of the irresistible title: This Book Will Save Your Life. It's not the first time I've been drawn towards AM Homes work - Jack, one of her earlier novels, has been on my must-read-that-sometime list for several years.

Orange Beauty

2006-06-08T04:19:00.001+01:00

It was third time lucky for Zadie Smith yesterday, when she was announced as the winner of The Orange Prize for her third novel On Beauty, which had missed out on the Booker and Whitbread Prizes. No luck about it of course, just talent.

Further update:

I still haven't read it.

(Or last year's winner.)

(Or the year before's...)

Orange Prize Shortlist 2006

2006-04-27T02:30:00.002+01:00

The shortlist for The Orange Prize was announced yesterday. Inevitably it includes the usual suspects: Ali & Zadie Smith - which reminded me that I still haven't read On Beauty.

One of Richard & Judy's Book Club 2006 choices - The History of Love by Nicole Krauss - is also on the list, although the winner - Labyrinth - was not entered as its author Kate Mosse is one of the co-founders of the Orange Prize. The other three contenders are the best-selling novelist Hilary Mantel for Beyond Black, first-timer Carrie Tiffany for Everyman's Rules For Scientific Living, and Sarah Waters with Night Watch - which is currently being serialised on BBC Radio 4's Book At Bedtime.

Newsnight's Martha Kearney is chairing the judging panel, which includes the comedienne and novelist Jenny Éclair, Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, columnist and novelist India Knight and children's laureate Jacqueline Wilson. The winner will be announced on June 6th.

The six books on the shortlist for the £30,000 Orange Prize are:

Memento Mori

2006-04-15T23:23:00.002+01:00

I was listening to the radio this afternoon while taking one last thorough browse round my favourite but, sadly, soon-to-be-closed bargain bookstore (amazingly I did manage to resist the temptation to buy anything) when I heard on the news that Dame Muriel Spark had passed away. I moaned quietly. Well, I hope it was quiet. I knew she was getting on a bit (she was 88) but it's still sad to hear that one of my favourite living authors is no more.

The bookshop had one of her books in stock - two together in fact: Aiding and Abetting / The Go-Away Bird. I loved Aiding and Abetting - a deliciously witty story (aren't they all though?) about a psychiatrist who suddenly finds herself consulted by two different patients both claiming to be Lord Lucan. It's a pity the miseryguts Booker Prize judges didn't see fit to shortlist it that year (as they had in 1969 and 1981). The Go-Away Bird on the other hand is yet another one of those books-I-haven't-read. I didn't buy it though - the bright red cover design would look garish next to my other Muriel Spark books which are orange Penguin paperbacks. I picked most of them up as a job lot in a sale at West Bridgford library a few years ago, and I've been looking forward - ok: meaning - to read them ever since.

Coincidentally I'd seen one of them in my local library earlier this morning, it was her first novel:

The Comforters

Although her first break had come six years earlier, in 1951, when she won a short story competition in The Observer. I'd pleased to see that The Observer have republished that story: The Seraph and the Zambesi.

In all there are ten of her books sitting on my shelves, most of them still waiting to be read:

The Comforters (1957)
Robinson (1958)
The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960)
The Bachelors (1960)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)
*The Public Image (1968)
The Abbess of Crewe (1974)
The Takeover (1976)
*Loitering With Intent (1981)

*shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

I will treat myself to one of them tomorrow; and, I suppose in the circumstances, I really must get hold of her 1959 book: Memento Mori...

Island

2006-04-04T03:00:00.002+01:00

The next book-I-haven't-read-yet was chosen by chance. I just opened The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction at random and the first name I saw was: Gary Indiana. Nope, never heard of him; but on the opposite page was a picture of a book I did know, one I was very keen to get hold of a few years ago, and eventually did...and yet I still haven't read it. This is the picture...

Island

by Aldous Huxley

I found my copy of Island in the pile next to my printer rather than in its place on the shelf, which means it is probably within twenty or thirty places of the front of my to-be-read queue. Coincidentally, I came across a perceptive reference to Huxley's Brave New World while I was reading Dubravka Ugresic's Thank You For Not Reading last week (I went back to the library and got it out after all) and she quotes this passage from Neil Postman's Foreword to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death:

"Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

When I read I Brave New World I was astounded at how it seemed to be getting more and more relevant every day. I've always felt that Orwell was too pessimistic in his view of humanity: oppressive regimes are always overthrown eventually. It's not the boot stamping on the face forever that we have to fear, it's the laziness in the face of an information overload, the shhh-Corrie's-on I-don't-want-to-think-about-it attitude, the lure of blissful ignorance and of soma.

But going back to Island, or "Huxley's Utopia" as the blurb describes it, the quote on the cover describes it thus:

"Huxley's last novel in which the horrors of Brave New World melt into the vision of an eastern state governed by reason and love."

Fascinating. I really must read it...someday.

There's an Island Foundation devoted to "creating a more sensible society as inspired by the ideas of Aldous Huxley." Good luck to them. Their website is here.

Roadside Picnic

2006-03-29T04:17:00.002+01:00

Hearing of the death of Stanislaw Lem reminded me of another book-I-haven't-read-yet, although it's not one of his. Lem was most famous for writing Solaris which was made into a classic Russian science-fiction film in 1971, and a not-so classic American science-fiction film, starring George Clooney, in 2002. I haven't seen the Clooney version, and the only thing I remember about the Russian film was a sleep-inducing sequence in which someone was driving along a motorway at night for ages and ages. However, another film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky made a haunting impression on me, and that film - Stalker - was based on a book I haven't read yet because it's so rare that I've never come across a copy:

Roadside Picnic

Arkady & Boris Strugatsky

Ragged Trousered Pessimist

2006-03-28T01:01:00.001+01:00

I made the mistake of browsing round another charity shop today, but it was an Oxfam shop so there was no danger of me buying anything: the prices they charge you would have thought poverty was history already! One book that caught my eye was The Perpetual Pessimist (An Everlasting Calendar of Gloom and Almanac of Woe) by Sagittarius? and Daniel George. Just my kind of thing - a book full of miserable, fatalistic, quotations. Anyway I decided to try and find out more about The Perpetual Pessimist tonight, and a bit of googling led me to the fascinating alphaDictionary.com. Nothing to do with the book though - it just so happens that in their list of the 100 Funniest Words in English, at number 87, is the fabulous word smellfungus which they define as "a perpetual pessimist". Apparently Smellfungus was a character created by Tristram Shandy author Laurence Sterne in A Sentimental Journey (another book I haven't read) as a satirical parody of Tobias Smollett.

alphaDictionary's list also includes abibliophobia: the fear of running out of reading material - something I certainly don't suffer from, and never will: my shelves already have more than enough books to see me out.

Meanwhile, Oxfam also had a copy of another book I haven't read yet but really should have...

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell

...a realistic depiction of working class life a hundred years ago, an indictment of capitalism, a socialist classic, and a book that has changed lives. But not mine because I still haven't read it yet.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

2006-03-22T11:49:00.002Z

Unread books creep up and bite me whatever I do and wherever I look. It's not even safe to watch dumb TV. I caught some of Through The Keyhole on BBC2 this afternoon, and there in Lisa I'Anson's pad was a copy of a book-I-haven't-read-yet which has been waiting patiently on my shelf for so many years that I'd forgotten all about it.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Sogyal Rinpoche

It came recommended by the John Cleese, who called it one of the most helpful books he'd ever read, and The Observer, who said it was for "readers of all religions and readers of none" - but is that a reader of no religion, or a reader of no books? I suppose I qualify either way. Just my luck if I get reincarnated as a bookworm. Instant karma's gonna get ya...

Thank You For Not Reading

2006-03-21T00:01:00.001Z

I was in the library today - looking for 1001 Books - and one title caught my eye, it said:

Thank You for Not Reading

Essays on literary trivia

by Dubravka Ugresic

I picked it up, had a quick shufty, and then put it back on the shelf, unread.

You're welcome, Dubravka.

Julian Evans in The Guardian calls it a book to be treasured, and it is "enjoyable, biting and funny" according to Mark Thwaite on readysteadybook.com, who also recommends The Uses of Slime Mould by Nicholas Mosley. Tch, so that's two more books to feel guilty about not-reading...

The Voyage That Never Ends

2006-03-14T02:03:00.005Z

Charity shops are a major source of books I haven't read yet and while I was out wandering this afternoon (avoiding some upheavals at home in my usual cowardly way) I found a book I had never heard of, but whose title pierced my heart and had to be borne home...

Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid

by Malcolm Lowry

Lowry was already familiar to me as the author of Under The Volcano - another book I haven't read yet. I almost started it a few years ago, then decided it wasn't my kind of thing: I don't identify with drunks. Lowry, whose characters were largely based on himself, suffered from alcoholism and depression, but wasn't without humour. For his own epitaph he wrote:

Malcolm Lowry
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank, daily,
And died playing the ukelele.

Of course Lowry didn't die playing the ukelele: according to The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction - another depository of books-I-haven't-read-yet, he died of an overdose of sleeping pills on June 27th, 1957 - the birthday of his friend Paul Fitte, who committed suicide while they were both students at Cambridge - possibly with Lowry's assistance. There's a sad novel in there somewhere. Suddenly I can empathise with Lowry, because my closest friend killed himself in 1990.

So, the Aged - amongst whose number my friend Graham will never be - are 50p better off, and my shelves creak under the weight of another book I haven't read...yet. Lowry died leaving 'Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid' unfinished. The title is taken from this poem:

On The Death of Mr. William Hervey
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)

It was a dismal, and a fearful night,
Scarce could the morn drive on th'unwilling Light,
When sleep, death's image, left my troubled breast,
By something liker death possest.
My eyes with tears did uncommanded flow,
And on my soul hung the dull weight
Of some intolerable fate.
What bell was that? ah me! too much I know.
My sweet companion, and my gentle peer,
Why hast thou left me thus unkindly here,

Thy end for ever, and my life, to moan?
O, thou hast left me all alone!
Thy soul and body when death's agony
Besieg'd around thy noble heart,
Did not with more reluctance part
Than I, my dearest friend, do part from thee.
My dearest friend, would I had dy'd for thee!
Life and this world henceforth will tedious be.
Nor shall I know hereafter what to do
If once my griefs prove tedious too.

Silent and sad I walk about all day,
As sullen Ghosts stalk speechless by
Where their hid treasures lie;
Alas, my treasure's gone! why do I stay?
He was my friend, the truest friend on earth;
A strong and mighty influence join'd our birth;
Nor did we envy the most sounding name
By friendship giv'n of old to fame.
None but his brethren he and sisters knew,
Whom the kind youth preferr'd to me;

And ev'n in that we did agree,
For much above my self I lov'd them too.
Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unweari'd have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledoean stars so fam'd for love,
Wondred at us from above!
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine;
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, Eloquence, and Poetry,
Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.
Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,

Have ye not seen us walking every day?
Was there a tree about which did not know
The love betwixt us two?
Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade;
Or your sad branches thicker join,
And into darksome shades combine,
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid!
Henceforth no learned Youths beneath you sing,
Till all the tuneful birds to'your boughs they bring;
No tuneful birds play with their wonted chear,

And call the learned youths to hear,
No whistling winds through the glad branches fly,
But all with sad solemnity,
Mute and unmoved be,
Mute as the grave wherein my friend does lie.
To him my Muse made haste with every strain
Whilst it was new and warm yet from the brain:
He lov'd my worthless rhymes and, like, a friend,
Would find out something to commend.
Hence now, my Muse! thou canst not me delight;

Be this my latest verse,
With which I now adorn his hearse,
And this my grief, without thy help, shall write.
Had I a wreath of bays about my brow,
I should contemn that flourishing honor now:
Condemn it to the Fire, and joy to hear
It rage and crackle there.
Instead of bays, crown with sad cypress me;
Cypress which tombs does beautify:
Not Phoebus griev'd so much as I

For him, who first was made that mournful tree.
Large was his soul; as large a soul as ere
Submitted to inform a body here.
High as the place 'twas shortly'in heaven to have,
But low, and humble as his grave.
So high that all the Virtues there did come
As to their chiefest seat
Conspicuous, and great;
So low, that for me too it made a room.
He scorn'd this busy world below, and all
That we, mistaken mortals, pleasure call;

Was fill'd with inn'ocent gallantry and truth,
Triumphant ore the sins of youth.
He like the Stars, to which he now is gone,
That shine with beams like flame,
Yet burn not with the same,
Had all the light of youth, of the fire none.
Knowledge he only sought, and so soon caught,
As if for him Knowledge had rather sought.
Nor did more Learning ever crowded lie
In such a short mortality.

When ere the skilful youth discours'd or writ,
Still did the notions throng
About his eloquent tongue,
Nor could his ink flow faster than his wit.
So strong a wit did Nature to him frame,
As all things but his judgement overcame;
His judgement like the heav'nly moon did show,
Temp'ring that mighty sea below.
Oh had he liv'd in Learning's world, what bound
Would have been able to control

His over-powering soul?
We'ave lost in him arts that not yet are found.
His mirth was the pure spirits of various wit,
Yet never did his God or friends forget.
And when deep talk and wisdom came in view,
Retir'd, and gave to them their due:
For the rich help of books he always took,
Though his own searching mind before
Was so with notions written ore
As if wise Nature had made that her book.

So many Virtues join'd in him, as we
Can scarce pick here and there in History.
More then old writer's practice ere could reach,
As much as they could ever teach.
These did Religion, Queen of Virtues' sway,
And all their sacred motions steer,
Just like the first and highest sphere
Which wheels about, and turns all Heaven one way.
With as much zeal, devotion, piety,
He always liv'd, as other Saints do die.

Still with his soul severe account he kept,
Weeping all debts out ere he slept;
Then down in peace and innocence he lay,
Like the sun's laborious light,
Which still in water sets at night,
Unsullied with his journey of the day.
Wondrous young man! why wert thou made so good,
To be snatch'd hence ere better understood?
Snatch'd before half of thee enough was seen!
Thou ripe, and yet thy life but green!

Nor could thy friends take their last sad farewell,
But danger and infectious death
Malitiously seiz'd on that breath
Where life, spirit, pleasure always us'd to dwell.
But happy thou, ta'ne from this frantick age,
Where igno'rance and hypocrisy does rage!
A fitter time for heaven no soul ere chose,
The place now only free from those.
There 'mong the blest thou dost for ever shine,
And wheresoe're thou casts thy view

Upon that white and radiant crew,
See'st not a soul cloath'd with more light than thine.
And if the glorious saints cease not to know
Their wretched friends who fight with life below;
Thy flame to me does still the same abide,
Only more pure and rarifi'd.
There whilst immortal hymns thou dost reherse,
Thou dost with holy pity see
Our dull and earthly Poesy,
Where grief and misery can be join'd with verse.

Debatable Land

2006-03-11T01:37:00.000Z

The judges for the 2006 Man Booker Prize were announced today - they include Hermione and Aunt Petunia. That's Hermione Lee, a biographer and academic who will chair the panel, and actress Fiona Shaw who plays Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter films (amongst many, perhaps more impressive roles). They will be joined by The Independent's film critic Anthony Quinn, poet-turned-novelist Simon Armitage, and award-winning novelist Candia McWilliam. Ahhhh, I suppose that would be the Candia McWilliam who won the 1994 Guardian Fiction Prize with...

Debatable Land

...another one of those books I haven't read yet. It has been sitting patiently on one shelf or another since August 22nd, 1997 - I know because I've just found the receipt bookmarking page one! Oh dear.

Orange Prize 2006

2006-03-06T20:37:00.002Z

The longlist for the 2006 Orange Prize was announced today,
which reminds me - I still haven't read last year's winner...

We Need To Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

Not that I needed any more reminding: Lionel Shriver was the guest on yesterday's Bookclub on BBC Radio 4, and the discussion convinced me that maybe I should give it another try. "...convinced me that maybe..."? You see how I'm backsliding already? I started reading it last year but didn't get very far - I found Eva Khatchadourian's convoluted sentences rather clunky. Who speaks, or rather writes letters, using phrases like: "flimsy pressboard cabinetry", "impervious for codswallop" or "cussedly nonspecific dissatisfactions"?

The Orange Prize is open to "any full length novel, written in English by a woman of any nationality". As a matter of balance I feel there ought to be a Lemon Prize for the worst full-length novel written in English by a man - although I suppose it would be difficult for anyone to beat Jeffrey Archer.

Anyway this year's Orange longlist includes two titles from last year's Booker Prize shortlist: the only one that I haven't read yet - On Beauty by Zadie Smith; and The Accidental by Ali Smith which won the Whitbread Novel Award in January. Of course The Booker Prize is restricted to citizens of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, whereas the Orange Prize is open to the rest of the world: so Marilynne Robinson has to regarded as a strong contender with Gilead which has already won the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion (worth $200,000 - almost four times as much as the Orange Prize), the Unitarian Universalist Association's Melcher Book Award, the US National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction no less!

The twenty books in the running for the £30,000 Orange Prize are:

Pratt

2006-03-04T02:44:00.002Z

Libraries are, of course, an Aladdin's cave of unread books, to which I am drawn like a sex-addict to an orgy; and here in Nottinghamshire the libraries produce a monthly leaflet called Your Next Good Read for the benefit of people who struggle to find anything to read. Who are these people? Can't they see we are all surrounded by books and that they breed like rabbits?

While scanning through the list for March, I was alarmed to see that Jeffrey Archer has a new book out - surely peddling fiction should constitute a breach of his parole? And apparently one of his 'characters' escapes from the World Trade Centre, so it sounds like he hasn't lost any of his subtlety. It reminds me of something that happens in First Among Equals - not the book, I've never read any of his books, obviously, but the ITV adaptation: you see a toddler playing football in a garden, you see an open gate, you hear a truck...

Anyway, further down the list is the new book by David Nobbs: Pratt à Manger which, to be honest, sounds a bit too similar to Adrian Mole's (disappointing) Cappuccino Years.

I won't be adding Pratt à Manger to my To-Be-Read list because, much as I love David Nobbs' work, I have never read any of his books - I've only ever seen the TV adaptions. There are two of his books on my shelves waiting to be read, one being the original book about Henry Pratt:

Second From Last In The Sack Race

I enjoyed the ITV series The Life and Times of Henry Pratt, starring Jack Deam (pictured on the cover above) and Bryan Dick as Pratt, who have both gone on to become familiar faces on our TV screens. Dick went on to appear in Bonjour la Classe and many other things including Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Bleak House; while Deam now plays Marty in the outrageously titwank brilliant Shameless. Like many of ITV's old shows - Shine On Harvey Moon also springs to mind - The Life and Times of Henry Pratt isn't available on DVD, proving that the 'I' in 'ITV' stands for Idiots.

The other unread David Nobbs book I own is...

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

It is, of course, obligatory at this point to say that I didn't get where I am today without knowing that The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin was the greatest sit-com of all-time and up yer cunge to anyone who says otherwise. I would read it, but the trouble is it smells like a Bolivian unicyclist's jockstrap - something which you can probably buy from eBay, the real-life manifestation of Reggie Perrin's rubbish-selling shop Grot. According to wikipedia, the first item sold on eBay was the founder's broken laser pointer (for $14.83). When asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken, the winning bidder replied: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."

Mumbo Jumbo

2006-03-04T02:30:00.000Z

Because of all the controversy about that cartoon of He-who-must-not-be-mocked-unless-you-want-to-be-the-target-of-a-violent-mob-(peace-be-upon-him); and Tony Blair suggesting to Parky he expected to be judged by God over the Iraq war; I decided that my next book-I-haven't-read-yet ought to be...

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World

by Francis Wheen

I really am itching to read this one. I am increasingly dismayed (to put it very mildly) at the way the world seems to be sleepwalking back to the dark ages. The widespread bad attitude towards science and the embracement of superstition and mysticism is just lazy-mindedness - so many people just seem to love wallowing in their own ignorance. The majority of the American public, for example, seem determined to reject any presidential candidate who can be labelled with that most insulting of all c-words: clever. No-one likes, let alone trusts, anyone who is cleverer than them. The Republican Party have grasped this and for several decades now have put forward the dumbest schmuck they can find as their candidate. Indeed, if Clinton hadn't had the advantage of appearing too stupid to keep his dick in his pants and Jimmy Carter hadn't seemed like a dumb peanut-farmer, the right-wing would have been in power over there for more than thirty years. Meanwhile, here in Britain, Tony Blair is happy with the teaching of Creationism in schools, leaving me to wonder if he's secretly a religious fruitcake, and why filling children's head full of c(lapt)rap isn't classed as child abuse. ...However, when I picked Francis Wheen's book up, I saw this on the cover: 'HILARIOUS' JEREMY PAXMAN - and that reminded me of another book I meant to read several years ago but didn't, and which caught my eye in the library recently:

The English

by Jeremy Paxman

See? That's the most dangerous thing about books you haven't read: they gang up on you and multiply until one day you find yourself hopelessly outnumbered by them. You realise they are looking down on you from the full-to-bursting shelves (and up from the piles on the floor) eating up more and more space and leaving less and less room for air - slowly suffocating you in revenge for your neglect. I think religions use a similar technique: they spread themselves insidiously through society until suddenly you realise that they are in power - by which time you find they have taken you to war against some other bunch of religious nutters.

The trouble is it's much easier to be lazy-minded than to get to grips with evolutionary biology. I'm making one last attempt to read Evolution in Four DImensions by Eva Jablonka and
Marion J. Lamb this weekend, but it's heavy going. While another book nearing the top of my to-be-read list is...

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Evolution and the Meaning of Life)

by Daniel C. Dennett

...and there is an interview with Daniel Dennett in The Observer today. It seems his new book Breaking The Spell is all about religion - the institutionalized superstition that wrecks so many lives - and how it evolved. Brilliant. All we need now is for Michael Moore to write a biography of Cowboy No.1. Carrying the 'fight' to the 'enemy' is imperative - because there's no doubt that the Christians are mobilizing: the copy of Darwin's Dangerous Idea I have on loan from the library had a pretty postcard inserted into it, courtesy NPN, describing evolution as a "theory-tale" and 'explaining' how "only an intelligent creator could design a complete system of co-dependent life forms, none of which could survive without the other."

It's enough to make you wonder sometimes if you're on the right planet.

World Book Day

2006-03-03T00:05:00.001Z

I thought to myself: I must mark World Book Day with a blog entry - something relevant - but what? I decided to read some of my emails for a change: especially those from all the book sites' mailing lists I've signed up to over the years. I never have to venture far into the world of literature before an unread book jumps out at me, and that's just what happened when I read today's email from lovereading.co.uk.

It puts the spotlight on Quick Reads - described as "short, fast-paced new books designed to encourage reluctant readers to get hooked on books." There are twelve of them on sale (for £2.99) and another twelve coming out in May; and they are only about 100 pages long which is a good thing - there are too many long books in the world already. If authors keep writing such long books shelf-space could be extinct within ten years. I blame computers...or Proust...or Caxton.

Anyway, I made the fatal mistake of browsing through these Quick Reads (a deceptive title, like all those three-for-the-price-of-two offers that lure you into spending twice as much as you intended: however quick they are to read it still means more books I haven't read yet) and one name poked me in the eye: Tom Holt.

Someone Like Me is Tom Holt's contribution to Quick Reads: a fantasy-thriller with a sting in the tail which sounds darkly mysterious and therefore tempting. But here I have to confess: I have no idea what his books are like because I haven't read any of them yet, including...

The Portable Door

by Tom Holt

...which was one of a set of books I won in a competition in the local evening paper. He does come highly recommended - but then don't they all? Time Out magazine described his books as "Dazzling", and New Scientist called them "wildly imaginative". New Scientist?

According to his profile at lovereading.co.uk, Tom Holt studied bar billiards at Oxford, as well as "ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines". As someone who briefly studied snooker at Bristol University I feel a definite affinity for him, so I'm moving The Portable Door and Someone Like Me quite a few places up my immense mental To-Be-Read list. It's the least I can do. Sorry, Tom.

But you know what? Turns out it's not really World Book Day at all - only in the UK & Ireland. The rest of the world celebrate World Book Day on April 23rd: Shakespeare's birthday. Apparently, ours is brought forward so that it falls during term-time, which means we get two World Book Days every year. Bloody kids!

The first twelve Quick Reads are:

Linda Smith

2006-03-01T03:23:00.001Z

What a rotten day. First I was woken up by the noise of some scrote(s) smashing through my back door, and now I hear that the wittiest woman in the world has been taken from us. The scrote(s) found that there was very little worth stealing here, then scarpered when they realised I was in; but the death of Linda Smith really is a loss. I couldn't believe it - surely she was too young to die? She was only 48. I didn't even know she had cancer.

Most days I fill in a TV & Radio survey for GfK and one of the comments I left recently was that any programme featuring Stephen Fry or Linda Smith was an absolute must. I cheered whenever I heard that Linda was going to be one of the panellists on The News Quiz, Just A Minute, Have I Got News For You, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - or any of the other comedy shows on which she was a regular. Not for nothing was she voted "The Wittiest Living Person" by listeners to Radio 4's Word Of Mouth in 2002.

In recent years almost every stand-up comedian has written a novel or two as well - I blame Ben Elton (he probably blames Thatch) - but Linda Smith doesn't seem to have found the time. Perhaps she was too busy writing her own radio show A Brief History of Time Wasting. She did contribute to at least one book though...

Sit-down Comedy: Stand-ups Swap the Stage for the Page

edited by Malcolm Hardee and John Fleming

Of course I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure she would have understood: there are so many ways to waste time but never enough time to waste. Sadly, Malcolm Hardee is also no longer with us either, having drowned early last year. Linda was also the president of the British Humanist Association, so that's one less rational person in the world as well. Her passing leaves us living in a slightly sadder, madder world.

In The Guardian, The News Quiz's chairman Simon Hoggart mentions a couple of Linda's many funny contributions to the show, including this one:

"I do sympathise with Bush and Blair trying to find WMDs. I'm like that with my scissors. I put them down, then I search all over the house, and I never find them. Of course, I do know that my scissors exist."

BBC Radio 4 will broadcast a special tribute edition of The News Quiz on Friday at 6.30pm.

I'll certainly be tuning in, but I won't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe I'll cry with laughter.

1001 Books

2006-02-26T04:00:00.002Z

What's the worst thing that could happen to someone struggling with an ever-increasing pile of books waiting to be read? Someone else publishing a book called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die that's what! Thanks Peter Boxall - that's just what I needed! Another list of books I will be unable to resist looking through and, inevitably, even more books I will want to read, but probably never get round to. As if there haven't been enough of these lists already:

The BBC's Big Read
The Channel 4 / Waterstone's Books of the Century
Anthony Burgess's 99 Novels: The Best in English since 1939
The Modern Library Top 100 best English language novels of the 20th century
etc. etc.

According to the review in tomorrow morning's Observer, those 1,001 books you must read before you kick the bucket include ELEVEN by J.M. Coetzee. Now I'm an admirer of Coetzee - have been ever since I read his memoir Boyhood with which I felt a tremendous affinity - but eleven? That's going too far; and judging by the review there is a faint, fusty, male smell about the list as well. (Although I wouldn't go as far as Tim on Intersecting Lines who thinks "it sounds like meretricious crap".) Even so, I look forward to skimming through it, and the UK edition does have a superb cover...

...borrowing from the iconic Penguin cover design for Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.
Mind you, at 960 pages, it must be the size of a cow!
(Tra-la-laa, Tra-la-la-laaa... )

So why 1,001?
"Because of its Scheherazadian connotations" the author says.
Which reminded me of another book I still haven't read:

Arabian Nights:
Tales from the Thousand and One Nights

Maybe I should get it down off the shelf and fall asleep reading one of Scheherazade's tales tonight. Then again, if I'm ever going to get all these books read I'm going to have to stop sleeping at all.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is published by
Cassell Illustrated on March 9th.

At Swim

2006-02-25T15:19:00.000Z

According to the Guardian today Flann O'Brien's surreal novel The Third Policeman has become a best-seller in America after it appeared briefly on screen in the TV show Lost. It seems fans of the show are desperate for clues as to what the hell it's all about. I'm glad I didn't get into it - I just wasn't impressed by the ten minutes I saw: the bits of the crashed plane all landing together on the beach rather than being scattered; the engine still running; the survivors walking around in their only-slightly ripped clothes; the all-American hero doctor rushing around saving lives left, right and centre...I laughed, threw things at the screen and switched over. If I wanted to be baffled by a great TV show I would buy The Prisoner DVD box set. (Or I would if I could afford it.)

But back to the book - apparently one of the publishers who rejected it said this: "We realise the author's ability but think that he should become less fantastic; in this new novel he is more so."

How's that for a rejection slip? Being told your novel is too fantastic!

Anyway, I did get round to reading The Third Policeman back in May 2004, and although I struggled to get my head round it - who wouldn't? - it was certainly memorable. (If it does represent a clue to unravelling Lost I can only think that the show's producer has been bashed on the head while trying to murder television and the whole shebang will end the way it started. Maybe it's just his revenge on society after he never got the bicycle he wanted for Christmas when he was seven.) However, it's Flann O'Brien's second best known novel At Swim Two Birds that I haven't got round to reading yet, and the plan was to read that before I tackled this:

At Swim Two Boys

by Jamie O'Neill

It was because of my interest in this book that I first heard of Flann O'Brien, what with the title of O'Neill's book being un homage to O'Brien, so I thought I ought to read At Swim Two Birds first, but I haven't...yet. One thing leads to another, and sometimes not-doing one thing leads to not-doing another. Kierkegaard would have understood.

Rabbit, Run

2006-02-24T04:05:00.000Z

Open Book reminded me of another classic book-I-haven't-read-yet a few weeks ago. A listener rang the show wanting to have some romantic comedy novels recommended to her, and Mariella asked Tim Lott for suggestions. Now I have a lot of time for Tim Lott (if you'll ignore the pun) because I really enjoyed Rumours of a Hurricane and his latest book The Seymour Tapes. (Although I've never been able to face The Scent of Dried Roses - another candidate for this blog someday? Maybe.) Anyway, he stretched the definition of romantic comedy quite some way because one of the books he recommended was:

Rabbit, Run

by John Updike

I've read enough of it to know what a great writer Updike is - although that's not saying much: it only takes a few sentences. Less, maybe...

"Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires."

I used that in a literary opening lines quiz I compiled for Quizardry.com. As John Carey put it: "He has the kind of prose style that unzips the loose covers from words, so that they pop out sharp and shiny..."

There's no doubt I'm missing out here. Updike not only created a memorable character in Rabbit Angstrom, but chronicled his life story through the last half of the Twentieth Century in four novels: Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit At Rest (1990) - the last two winning Pulitzer Prizes.

Europa

2006-02-24T03:13:00.000Z

Open Book on BBC Radio 4 often adds to the ever-expanding list of books-I-haven't-read. On this week's edition, Mariella Frostrup was talking to Tim Parks about his new novel Cleaver, which sounds interesting (so that's another one on the to-be-read list) but she also mentioned one of his previous books: one which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997 and which I haven't read because I found it unreadable...

Europa

by Tim Parks

I started reading it, but didn't get very far because a few pages in there is one of the longest and most convoluted sentences I have ever read. I say read, I recognised all the words as they passed in front of my eyes but it was like being given a long, winding set of directions: subclause after subclause, it twisted and turned, deviated and digressed - in the end I completely lost track of what had been going on when the sentence started. But then maybe my memory is playing tricks on me; maybe I gave up too easily. Maybe I will give Europa another try one day...or maybe not. To be honest I would much rather re-read Once In Europa by one of my favourite writers: John Berger. Perhaps I will give Tim Parks another chance and read his new book - although, come to think of it, I said that about his last one (Judge Savage) and I never got round to reading that either.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

2006-02-23T01:24:00.003Z

Richard & Judy's book club is in its third bookboosting year, and today they were discussing another book I haven't read yet:

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

by Eva Rice

Now, don't get me wrong, I haven't not-read-it because it's such a girly-looking book, or for any snobby reasons - I've been impressed by the quality of the books chosen for the show each year (although there are always one or two books that no bloke would ever read, given the choice) - I just haven't managed to nab a copy from any of the local libraries I haunt.

Of the ten books on this year's list I have actually read three of them already. Yes, really. Three! I bet you thought I spent all my time blogging and not-reading didn't you?

I enjoyed The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. At times it reminded me of one of my favourite books of the last ten years: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, as well as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Impressively, The History of Love came recommended not just by Richard and Judy, but by two of my favourite writers: JM Coetzee (who described it as "charming, tender and wholly original") and Ali Smith ("a beauty of a book, totally alive...") It certainly is a beautiful book, in a similar vein to The Shadow of the Wind from last year's list - not as atmospheric, but certainly more poignant. How can we not take Leo Gursky to our hearts when presented with such a lonely existence: "All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen," he says.

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes was on the Booker Prize shortlist last year and the real life events it depicts were the subject of a recent BBC2 documentary. To be honest, I think anyone who saw that documentary will be frustrated by the slowness of the book. Fascinating as the story is, for me it fell rather flat compared to his previous work. But I'll come back to Barnes when I discuss not-having-yet-read A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. Meanwhile, in its characters' quest for a long-missing stuffed bird, The Conjuror's Bird by Martin Davies has echoes of Barnes' classic Flaubert's Parrot, but is much more in the page-turner mould of a Robert Goddard thriller. On the literary spectrum it lies somewhere between AS Byatt's Possession and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. But then, what doesn't? And talk of The Da Vinci Code brings me to Kate Mosse 's Labyrinth - another book involving a quest for the Holy Grail - which shifted 52,000 copies the week after it was featured (with Richard being particularly enthusiastic).

It's usually good fun to try and predict the winner of these literary contests, but this year it looks like a foregone conclusion. Even before the first book was opened (by the readers or the bookies) Labyrinth was the obvious front-runner. Maybe it will be my featured book-I-haven't-read-yet when it is announced as the winner on Saturday April 1st - or maybe I will actually read that one as well!

The ten books featured on Richard & Judy's Book Club 2006 are:

Travels With My Aunt

2006-02-15T04:41:00.000Z

Another thing you shouldn't do if you've already got far too many books to read is to sign up to a mailing list like the ones run by Suzanne at dearreader.com

I got an email from her yesterday with a sample of this month's Penguin classic:

Travels With My Aunt
by
Graham Greene

It's another book I have never gotten round to reading, despite Graham Greene being one of my favourite authors. An incredibly laconic writer, he could create an ominous atmosphere with almost no words at all. He was also a master of all genres - as well as all those gripping thrillers like Brighton Rock, Stamboul Train, A Gun For Saleand, my favourite, The Ministry of Fear- with its bizarrely sinister opening at a church fête; he also wrote comedy, most notably Our Man In Havana- his story of a vacuum cleaner turned spy, as well as one of the best tear-jerkers ever in The End of the Affair.

Better still he took his readers all round the world, to:

Argentina - The Honorary Consul
Austria - The Third Man
Congo - A Burnt-out Case
Cuba - Our Man In Havana
Germany - No Man's Land
Haiti - The Comedians
Mexico - The Lawless Roads and The Power and the Glory
Panama - The Captain and the Enemy
Sierra Leone - The Heart of the Matter
South Africa - The Human Factor
Spain - Monsignor Quixote
Switzerland - Dr. Fischer of Geneva
and Vietnam - The Quiet American

and probably a few more besides. I don't know where he travelled with his aunt though - because that's one of the few Greene books I haven't read...yet.

Sex

2006-02-14T03:16:00.000Z

I saw the new Madonna video on Top of the Pops tonight (good to see Nizlopi on there as well - the BBC really pissed me off by not having them on the Christmas show) and I was thinking: there is going to be quite a scene in the Ritchie household in a few years when Lourdes starts taking an interest in boys and going out clubbing...

Madonna: You are not going out wearing that.
Guy: You're not kidding - I've seen more material in one of my old screenplays.
Lourdes: Oh come on. Anyone would think I was cavorting round in my underwear like Mum does in her videos.

Which reminded me of another book I never did get round to 'reading'...

Sex
by
Madonna

...but then I'm told it's quite hard to come across a copy.

The Magus

2006-02-12T02:45:00.000Z

From one metafictional book to another.

The French Lieutenant's Woman
by
John Fowles

has been described as a metafictional deconstruction of a Victorian novel and is, needless to say, another book I haven't read yet. I very nearly started reading it after he died in November, and then again when it was the BBC Radio 4 Classic Serial in January. Almost, but not quite: the story of my life.

I have read his first novel The Collector though, and was a bit shocked by it - a young man wins the pools and buys a remote house with a cellar wherein he can keep the object of his desires: the girl he admires from afar after he kidnaps her. Would that get published nowadays, or would it be too politically incorrect?

But the John Fowles book I really should have read a long time ago is:

The Magus

I found a copy several summers ago in what used to be my favourite charity shop - in West Bridgford (down the road from my second home: Trent Bridge cricket ground) - a shop in which, as if by magic, obscure old books I was searching for kept appearing. (Used to be because ever since they had a swanky refit a couple of years ago they've been charging Oxfam prices for books.) The old lady behind the counter did rather put me off though when she wished me luck with it: telling me she hadn't made head nor tail of it! Mind you, at least she'd had a go - what am I like?

Tristram Shandy

2006-02-09T01:01:00.000Z

Another bad idea for someone who already has too many books waiting to be read is to subscribe to the Review-A-Day email from Powells, but as a book addict (hello, my name is Phillip and I'm a biblioholic) I did. Today's review is of a book called Things in the Night by the Estonian writer Mati Unt, which the reviewer describes as "scatterbrained" - prompting a comparison with one of those classic books I've been meaning to get round to for years...

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
by
Laurence Sterne

Sometimes these unread books keep popping up everywhere I look. While I was not reading How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World a few days ago, I noticed that the 'P.S.' section at the back lists Francis Wheen's Top Ten books (of which I've managed to not read eight) and he names Tristram Shandy as his favourite. It is "the greatest fun fair of all novels" according to the South African writer André Brink, while Tom Paulin described it as "one of the funniest, most playful classics in the language." Sounds irresistable - and also, despite being one of the most patently unfilmable books ever written, it is currently in the cinemas as A Cock and Bull Story starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. The film looks hilarious, but I'll wait for it to turn up on TV - that will give me more time to get round to reading the book first. I understand that, while telling his life story, Tristram takes a long time to get round to being born - so I'm sure he would understand my own cunctatiousness.

Things of Darkness

2006-02-08T03:10:00.000Z

BBC Radio 4 has a lot to answer for, and listening to A Good Read is particularly dangerous if you're trying to avoid adding to your 'must read' pile - and so it was today. I had picked up a copy of one of the books under discussion a few months ago, but I put it back down on the shelf again. I had decided I didn't really want to read it. The life story of a homeless, criminal drug addict, told backwards from his suicide sounded too harrowing. It keeps winning awards though; and hearing Sue McGregor, Sir Christopher Frayling and Jon Snow talking about it today has put it back on my ever-expanding 'must read' list. It is

Stuart: A Life Backwards
by
Alexander Masters

Meanwhile, the book currently being serialised on Radio 4's Book At Bedtime is one of the many that sit staring at me from the shelves - although by slouching down in my chair I can hide behind my monitor from it's brooding presence.

This Thing of Darkness
by
Harry Thompson

I first heard of This Thing of Darkness when it was included on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize last year. Now any book featuring Charles Darwin is bound to get my attention, and with its echoes of Matthew Kneale's English Passengers - a rowlocking good read from a few years back - it went straight into the queue for the attention of my tired eyes. (My eyes would like me to read less and listen to the radio more to give them a rest - but there's the rub: listening to the radio just leaves me with more books to read.)

Sadly, Harry Thompson died of lung cancer last November, aged 45, having worked for the BBC as a producer of some of the very best comedy shows of the last ten years. As well as being a co-creator of Have I Got News For You and They Think It's All Over, he was also one of the writers on Monkey Dust, so he gave me a lot of laughter over the years. And Stuart Shorter was only 32 years old when he jumped in front of a train. The least I can do is get round to reading their books - but I haven't...yet.

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World

2006-02-07T04:18:00.000Z

Because of all the controversy about that cartoon of He-who-must-not-be-mocked-unless-you-want-to-be-the-target-of-a-violent-mob-(peace-be-upon-him), I decided that my next book-I-haven't-read-yet ought to be...

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World
by
Francis Wheen

I really am itching to read this one. I am increasingly dismayed (to put it very mildly) at the way the world seems to be sleepwalking back to the dark ages. The widespread bad attitude towards science and the embracement of superstition and mysticism is just lazy-mindedness - so many people just seem to love wallowing in their own ignorance.

The majority of the American public, for example, seem determined to reject any presidential candidate who can be labelled with that most insulting of all c-words: clever. No-one likes, let alone trusts, anyone who is cleverer than them. The Republican Party have grasped this and for several decades now have put forward the dumbest schmuck they can find as their candidate. Indeed, if Clinton hadn't had the advantage of appearing too stupid to keep his dick in his pants and Jimmy Carter didn't look like a dumb peanut-farmer, the right-wing would have been in power over there for more than thirty years. Meanwhile, here in Britain, Tony Blair is happy with the teaching of Creationism in schools, leaving me to wonder if he's secretly a religious fruitcake, and why filling children's head full of c(lapt)rap isn't classed as child abuse.

...However, when I picked Francis Wheen's book up, I saw this on the cover:

'HILARIOUS'
JEREMY PAXMAN

- and that reminded me of another book I meant to read several years ago but didn't, and which caught my eye in the library earlier this week:

The English
by
Jeremy Paxman

See? That's the most dangerous thing about books you haven't read: they gang up on you and multiply until one day you find yourself hopelessly outnumbered by them. You realise they are looking down on you from the full-to-bursting shelves (and up from the piles on the floor) eating up more and more space and leaving less and less room for air - slowly suffocating you in revenge for your neglect.

Rabbit, Run

2006-02-02T21:31:00.000Z

Listening to this week's edition of Open Book on BBC Radio 4 reminded me of another classic novel that, to my chagrin, I haven't read yet. A listener rang the show wanting to have some romantic comedy novels recommended to her. Mariella Frostrup asked Tim Lott for suggestions. I have a lot of time for Tim Lott (if you'll ignore the pun) because I really enjoyed Rumours of a Hurricane and his latest book The Seymour Tapes; although I've never been able to face The Scent of Dried Roses - another candidate for this blog someday? Maybe. Anyway, he stretched the definition of romantic comedy quite some way because one of the books he recommended was:

Rabbit, Run
by
John Updike

I've read enough of it to know what a great writer Updike is - although that's not saying much: it only takes a few sentences. Less, maybe.

"Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires."

I used that in a literary opening lines quiz I compiled for Quizardry.com. As John Carey put it: "He has the kind of prose style that unzips the loose covers from words, so that they pop out sharp and shiny..."

There's no doubt I'm missing out here. Updike not only created a memorable character in Rabbit Angstrom, but chronicled his life story through the last half of the Twentieth Century in four novels: Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit At Rest (1990) - the last two winning Pullitzer Prizes.

The Farm

2006-02-02T01:54:00.000Z

Richard & Judy's book club is in its third bookboosting year, and today they were discussing another book I haven't read yet:

The Farm

by

Richard Benson

And I probably never will read it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I haven't not-read-it for any snobby reasons: I've been impressed by the quality of the books chosen for the show - although there are always one or two books that no bloke would ever read, given the choice. It's just life on a farm ain't my scene, however well written.

Of the ten books on this year's list I have actually read three of them already. Yes, really. Three! I bet you thought I spent all my time blogging and not-reading didn't you?

I enjoyed The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. At times it reminded me of one of my favourite books of the last ten years: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, as well as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Impressively, The History of Love came recommended not just by Richard and Judy, but by two of my favourite writers: JM Coetzee (who described it as "charming, tender and wholly original") and Ali Smith ("a beauty of a book, totally alive...") It certainly is a beautiful book, in a similar vein to The Shadow of the Wind from last year's list - not as atmospheric, but certainly more poignant. How can we not take Leo Gursky to our hearts when presented with such a lonely existence: "All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen," he says.

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes was on the Booker Prize shortlist last year and the real life events it depicts were the subject of a recent BBC2 documentary. To be honest, I think anyone who saw that documentary will be frustrated by the slowness of the book. Fascinating as the story is, for me it fell rather flat compared to his previous work. But I'll come back to Barnes when I discuss not-having-yet-read A History of the World in 10½ Chapters.

In its characters' quest for a long-missing stuffed bird, The Conjuror's Bird by Martin Davies has echoes of Barnes' classic Flaubert's Parrot, but is much more in the page-turner mould of a Robert Goddard thriller. On the literary spectrum it lies somewhere between AS Byatt's Possession and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. But then, what doesn't?

And talk of The Da Vinci Code brings me to Kate Mosse's Labyrinth - another book involving a quest for the Holy Grail - which shifted 52,000 copies after being featured last week (when Richard was particularly enthusiastic). It's usually good fun to try and predict the winner of these literary contests, but this year it looks like a foregone conclusion to me. Even before the first book was opened Labyrinth looked the obvious front-runner. I expect it will be my featured book-I-haven't-read-yet when it is announced as the winner a couple of months from now. However, the bookies disagree and you can get odds as high as 7-1 against Labyrinth at the moment. I might just go and bite their hand off...

The other 9 books featured on Richard & Judy's Book Club are:

Gravity's Rainbow

2006-02-01T03:18:00.000Z

Another book I'm ashamed of not having read yet is:

Gravity's Rainbow
by
Thomas Pynchon

Ashamed because for years whenever I scoured charity shops and second-hand bookshops this was the book I most wanted to find. Eventually I got my hands on a copy, and yet here I am - several years later - still not having got round to reading it.

I picked up a copy of The Crying of Lot 49 in a library sale last week - needless to say, I haven't read that yet either - and Pynchon ("The Greta Garbo of American letters") is one of the authors discussed by James Wood in The Irresponsible Self as well, so I keep being reminded of it. Trouble is, it's one of those big, difficult books. There's a review on the back cover which compares it to Moby Dick and Ulysses - need I say more?

It was 1984 when I first heard of Gravity's Rainbow, in the lyrics of Laurie Anderson's song Gravity's Angel from her album Mister Heartbreak. My musical taste knows no bounds, as the banner at the bottom of the page proves, so I loved Laurie Anderson's avant-garde single O Superman (watch the video here) as soon as I heard it back it 1981 and, after helping it to No.2 in the charts, I bought the album (Big Science - my o-o-o-o-odd review here) as well. Mister Heartbreak was her second album and is much more accessible. It features some wonderful percussion work as well as vocal contributions from Peter Gabriel and William S. Burroughs. Funny lyrics too...

♫ Why these mountains? Why this sky? This long road. This ugly train.
♫ Well he was an ugly guy. With an ugly face.
♫ An also ran in the human race.
♫ And even God got sad just looking at him. And at his funeral
♫ all his friends stood around looking sad. But they were really
♫ thinking of all the ham and cheese sandwiches in the next room.

Come to think of it, I still haven't got Mister Heartbreak on CD
...and I still haven't read the damn book yet!

The Irresponsible Self

2006-01-30T22:10:00.000Z

The book I took back to the library today, even though I haven't got round to reading it yet, was:

The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel
by
James Wood

My interest was sparked by reading this article in The Guardian (for whom he used to be the chief literary critic) which was distilled from the book's introduction. (You can read an extract from the book itself here.)

Wood seems to be a popular critic (if that's not an oxymoron) judging by the opening paragraph of this (quite critical) review in The Telegraph. (And what do you call critics who critique other critics anyway, my friends?) He was also one of the judges who awarded the 1994 Booker Prize to James Kelman for How Late It Was, How Late, causing some wag to suggest it be renamed the Fooker Prize because of Kelman's excessive use of vulgar vernacular.

I knew Wood from his novel The Book Against God which I read last year. Although I have to say that it wasn't particularly memorable - which is surely the most important aspect of any book. However, The Irresponsible Self is a collection of twenty-odd essays about comedy in literary fiction - and that is a strangely compelling combination, like sweet and sour. So I really would like to get round to reading this one - maybe sometime in the next few months. Then again, maybe I should read a few more of the books he discusses first... Oh, as if.

Cosmos

2006-01-29T21:56:00.000Z

Where to start? There are hundreds of books that have been patiently waiting for me to get round to reading them, and they are all sitting there on the shelves quietly whispering "me, me, me!"

I think I ought to go right back to the first book I never got round to reading. A book I asked my parents to buy me for Christmas when I was a teenager a quarter of a century ago:

Cosmos
by
Carl Sagan

I'm sure I must have skimmed through it looking at the pictures a few times, but I never actually read it and I always felt guilty about that. Perversely, the only part I definitely did read was Appendix 1 - Reductio ad Absurdum and the Square Root of Two. Science and Maths: that was the kind of boy I was - and, yes, I did collect stamps too. But no, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a trainspotter. So don't panic, this blog isn't going to be full of nerdy stuff. There's a whole shelf full of classic literature in front of me for a start. I doubt if I've read a third of those. And to my left there are two dozen Picador paperbacks, of which I've only read about four. Not to mention all the library books - there are two of those that have to go back tomorrow. Maybe I should go and finish the one that I have actually started...