Best and worst

Monday 11^th June 2012

I have read a lot of books recently and listened to many more.  This is the book I have enjoyed reading the most recently:  The Casino by Margaret Bonham, here is the end paper from the Persephone book: I got this book a while ago, read 1 or 2 stories – it is a collection of short stories – and then put it down, distracted by another book no doubt.  But recently I was unwell, and in this period of unwell-ness, I read such a lot (the only bonus of illness:  once the worst is passed, you can read and read with no sense of time or guilt.  You can read as if you were once again in your teens or early 20s and no-one’s ‘responsible adult’.  You can read as if you had never lost the ability to concentrate for more than 3 sentences together because that was the longest uninterrupted time you ever got). The writing is clear, witty and very pleasing just in its own right.  But the stories themselves are little stars:  each one rather different, though the focus is on domestic life.  If you like writing that is deceptively simple, slyly funny, bitter-sweet, and if you like stories that might only cover half a day in the life of someone maybe like you or I had we lived then and been the subject of M Bonham’s pen, I think you’ll love these. The worst book I read was the last book club read, and it was called Before I Go To Sleep by someone or other, really, don’t bother looking it up, you can have my copy if you really want.  Book club continues though we have had some drop-outs recently.  The last book wasn’t quite the worst we’ve had but it was hard going.  The chief problems were that it is based on someone – someone whom I disliked – losing her memory every night as she slept so each morning, she had to re-learn her life all over again.  Who is this man in bed with me for example (though I did wonder:  if she really didn’t know who the hell he was when she woke up but over the course of that day, gradually accepted that he was her husband etc etc – why did she get into bed naked?  I mean, she may have believed him but still, it would have felt like getting into bed with a near stranger, I’d have thought).  Anyway, this is a tiny flaw when compared to the plot.  This is the other chief problem.  As you can probably detect, the nature of her condition leads to a great deal of repetition, since every day we are treated to another ‘oh my God! who am I and who are you?’ scenario.  And every day she does the same or very similar things, chiefly squatting in the corner of her bedroom writing a diary.  Add to this that it is in that genre of literature I detest the most, possibly excepting novels about the wild west and Word Search books:  the psychological thriller. It wasn’t that badly written.  It didn’t make me want to tear the pages out, due to the writing style, unlike some we’ve had. I am choosing the next book.  It’s my turn again, which means it is over a year since Miss Pettigrew was scorned.  Then, the club, in it’s infancy, was about encouraging 1 of our number to read, as she had not at that point, ever read a book.  So I chose Miss P because a) I love it, and b) it’s a lovely, happy yet also deeply layered book about women.  This time I have chosen a book that I really love, and which isn’t ‘entry-level’ literature, but is nonetheless a pretty much perfect read, I think.  It’s Regeneration by Pat Barker, the first and I think the best of a trilogy.  Most of the characters are ‘real’ as is the event that provides the focus for the book, an act of anti-war writing.  A ‘novel’ set during WW1, it explores the moral perversion of war, its victims and also that of war as a well of brutally forged creativity.  Along the way, we deal with homosexuality, class and mental illness.  And yet, it isn’t a brutal or difficult book.  It is beautiful and deep.  Choosing it again, I am of course re-reading it, this is my third time and I love it more each time. I am braced, ready for the possible reaction.  I think you should do likewise. The worst book I have listened to is 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.  This is about 100 hours long and – oh – it’s so hard to sum it up or indeed summon up the energy to describe it.  I was going to tell you all how I felt about it some time ago but held back in case that might ‘spoil’ the outcome for other listeners.  However, I will now say that this novel, part fairy-tale, part mystery, part shopping list could have been so good.  And yet, it melted – but very slowly – into a frankly lazy mess.  I resorted to listening to it at a slightly faster pace on my iPod, and once or twice, in my sleep.  It made no difference whatsoever to my grasp of the plot, for the pace was like that of continental drift.  I was in fact listening to 1Q84 when I got on the wrong train some months ago.  This is, I think due to the mesmeric impact that the book and its audio presentation had on me.  I had to go on, though sometimes I felt rather numb…after it was finally over, I missed it in an odd way, but mainly I was downright angry with Mr Murakami because I honestly believe he could not be bothered to either edit it OR devise a real plot! Recently I also pondered the books I listen to while I knit and this was because I took out of the knitting box some items from last year.  Out come the toe-up bed-socks and I am instantly remembering listening to The King’s Speech;  Christmas decorations:  the biography of Joyce Grenfell;  more recently, cuffs and beaded twirly mitts will always remind me of the biography of Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin, which is very good indeed, by the way.  Knitting has always been a bit like a diary for me, because there is always a design book on the go and I date ideas, make notes, stick in swatches and photographs, and now I can add another memory layer to my knitting, my book listening.