Malignant Sadness - by Lewis Wolpert

This book has the subtitle "The Anatomy of Depression". It does not sound like light reading, but it is quite an accessible consideration of what depression is all about. The author is a scientist who has himself experienced depression.

This is the November Bookclub selection [I am rather behind]. It is not a book I would have necessarily come across by myself, though it is a topic that interests me. I think I gained some further insights from hearing his perspective.

Bill Bryson

Yesterday evening, we went to a talk by Bill Bryson. He was primarily promoting his new book, but it was rather more than a sales pitch. He is not a natural stage presence, but he is an engaging speaker nevertheless. He talked about various things that interested him, did a few readings from his books [not just the latest] and took questions.

Afterwards, he was available for book signing. It took a while, as there were quite a few people. Many of them had armfuls of books and wanted photos, which I thought was a bit of a cheek. I have met him before, but it was good to see him again.

Old Filth - by Jane Gardam

I am still behind with my reading. This was last month's Bookclub book, but at least I can still listen to the programme.

This book is the fictional life story of a solicitor, "Filth" ["Failed in London, try Hong Kong"]. It paints an interesting picture of someone born in the early 20th Century with estranged parents in the far East. It is a sad story, in some ways, because, although he never wanted for anything materially, I had the feeling that something was missing from his life. I enjoyed the read.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - by Bill Bryson

I always enjoy Bryson's writing and this book is no exception. It is effectively an autobiography of his first 10 years, but also paints a vivid picture of the US in the 1950s. There are numerous little-known facts and humorous observations. An easy read, which suited my mood.

Hopefully I will be able to attend a talk by the author in December and will be able to get my copy signed.

What I'm reading ...

I have started The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson.

Bill Bryson is one of a very few authors whose books I buy immediately upon publication. This is an autobiography of his early life and starts out with some good background on life in the US in the early 1950s.

Rum Punch - by Elmore Leonard

This was a Bookclub selection. I have been reading it for over a month! I don't think this is a reflection upon the book itself - just my frame of mind.

It is a crime novel and has very strong characterization. But I'm afraid that I found the story rather hard to follow and I'm not at all sure that I understood the outcome. This is probably because I spent so long reading it. I will listen to the Bookclub programme - maybe that will help ...

BookCrossing catch

For some time, I have been interested in the concept of book crossing. The idea is that you register a book on a special Web site and then leave it somewhere for someone to find. Then they can register its "capture" and may add a review to the site and "release" it themselves later. Books thus travel around and develop a life of their own.

I have released quite a few books and had the odd one found. But today I made my first "catch". I registered to get "release alerts" for books left in Cheltenham, where I happened to be going this afternoon. We went to the right spot and there it was.

The only downside is that the book was Angels and Demons by Dan Brown - a popular author, but not one of my favourites! The registration was 126-4363000.

The Invitation - by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

A good friend shared a prose poem with me, called The Invitation. It seems that the author went to a party and realized that she was very weary of the trivial conversation and questions that people pose in that context. She wrote about what she would really want to know. I have reproduced the text of the poem below.

I was quite taken with it and got the book, which gave more background. It was an easy enough read, but she struck me as the kind of person who just beats herself up all the time and makes some dumb decisions. Well, each to their own. I still enjoy the poem.

---

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - by John Berendt

This book is billed as being about a murder and its investigation. It's fair to say that the murder is a thread running through the book, but hardly makes for suspense. The true value in the book are the beautiful descriptions of the people and places of Savannah - the glimpses of the social hierarchy and stories of ordinary and extraordinary people's lives.

As an inveterate people watcher, I enjoyed the book. It made me curious about the place. Maybe I should investigate. A friend told me about the movie - perhaps I should check that too.

I am really not reading fast enough at the moment - life is too full ...

What I'm reading ...

I have started Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.

This is the next Bookclub selection. It is quite long, so it might take me a while, but it seems easy enough to read. It is set in the US Southern states, which is an area that quite interests me.

Time to Depart - by Lindsey Davis

It took me a while to get through this book - mainly because my personal circumstances just didn't allow much reading time. I enjoyed it. The story progresses well, even though I can easily get confused with all the Roman names. I always like the author's style, combining good descriptions with wit. Here is a piece that I rather enjoyed:

Normally I like widows. They are women of the world, often without guardians, and frequently adventurous. This one was different. She did not know she was a widow yet.

Now I must listen to the Bookclub programme.

What I'm reading ...

I have started Time to Depart by Lindsey Davis.

I have read and enjoyed a few of the Falco books. So I was glad when I heard that Lindsey Davis was going to be on Bookclub. I had planned to attend the recording, but, unfortunately, that didn't work out. But I look forward to hearing the programme next month.

Sunbathing in the Rain - by Gwyneth Lewis

I would say that this book "delivered". It gave me some insight into what depression is all about and how a depressed person sees the world. And it did that in a reasonably light- hearted way.

There were a lot of insights, some of which were disconcerting. For example:

One of the classic symptoms of depression is sleep disruption, which usually means waking up early or being unable to sleep when you're exhausted.

I know exactly how that feels.

I thought that this was insightful:

Depression happens to people who won't listen to the messages that their subconscious is sending them.

At times, the author's poetic background is very apparent:

When I was young I remember seeing a film about Helen Keller, who was born blind, deaf and dumb, and her teacher who brought her out into the world. At the start, the deeply introverted child didn't want to leave her familiar isolation and learn sign language. But her teacher forced her, pressing the words into her palm like money she didn't know how to spend.

Beautiful!

Another great observation:

The British love of pets is, therefore, highly misleading. It's a spiritual matter in heavy disguise. What people in the park are really doing, as they throw a ball for Tyson or Slipper, is taking their own souls for a run.

A great metaphor about surfing:

We were each given a surf-board, like a personal headstone to carry down the beach.

I often wondered what meditation was all about:

Prophylactic doses of boredom and depression together in the form of meditation are very helpful in building up a resistance to them in your emotional immune system.

I think this book will stay with me for a while ...

I though that the author sounded familiar. I remembered a series of talks on the radio last year and wondered if she were the same person. A quick exchange of emails confirmed that she is. Isn't the Internet wonderful.

What I'm reading ...

I have started Sunbathing in the Rain by Gwyneth Lewis.

The subtitle of this book is "A Cheerful Book About Depression", which I have to admit seems an unlikely prospect. However, this is a topic that interests me, as where ever I go I come across people who have suffered from depression. I stumbled across a recommendation for this book in a magazine article. So, I thought I'd give it a go ...

Hotel World - by Ali Smith

I've done well and finished this book a whole week before the Bookclub programme - makes a change, as I'm usually behind.

The book is really a set of linked stories. The starting point is an incident where a girl is killed in an accident with a "dumb waiter" at a hotel. She is one of the narrators. There is also her sister and 3 other people.

I found the book rather unsatisfying, as I'm not sure it took me anywhere. I also found it hard to read in parts. Each perspective is written in a different style, characterized I suppose by the "speaker". In one case, the result is a total lack of punctuation. This would be OK for a paragraph or two to make a point, but, for a long chapter, no thanks.

Guess you win some and lose some. I will, nevertheless, look forward to the programme to see what input other readers may have.

What I'm reading ...

I have started Hotel World by Ali Smith. The next Bookclub book ...

This is the story of a night told from the viewpoint of five people, all of whom are connected in some way with a particular hotel. It's interesting how many books there are that use the device of telling the story from several perspectives. Guess that's OK.

Weaving the Web - by Tim Berners-Lee

The first part of this book is about the history and origins of the Web. It was interesting to see that Berners-Lee didn't really invent that much - he simply brought together a bunch of existing technologies in a novel way. I'm not saying that this wasn't brilliant, as such vision is very impressive.

I was surprised to find that I was such an early adopter, as I started using the Web in around 1995 and it was really quite new then.

The latter half of the book is much more about his ideas for the future of the Web [as he saw it 5 years ago when he wrote the book]. Although a lot of this is rather philosophical [e.g. how will it affect the way we think in the future], he did foresee some of the current trends towards user interaction: Wikis and blogging.

What I'm reading ...

I have started Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee.

Time for a different read - non-fiction this time. Since I use the Internet - in particular the Web - all the time, I guess it would be good to understand its origins and where it might be going. Since Berners-Lee essentially invented it, this should be a good place to start.

Noughts and Crosses - by Malorie Blackman

The story is centered around two characters, Sephy and Callum. They live in a world where there are two classes of people: noughts, who have white skin and are the lower class, and Crosses, who have dark skin and are the ruling class. Sephy is a Cross; Callum is a nought. It follows their life and their relationship through their teenage years.

Since the book is aimed at young adults, I guess the age of the main characters is intended to give the reader someone to identify with. I assume the goal is to raise awareness of prejudice and injustice in society, by showing an extreme [by modern standards, but not by historic] example of what a society might be like.

The story is well written, with each chapter seeing the viewpoint alternately from Sephy and Callum. The pace is good and kept me turning the pages. There is a strong sense of their increasing maturity as they get older.

I was curious about some of the terminology. The noughts [note the lower case first letter] were referred to in derogatory terms as "blankers". I imagine that this is supposed to be about their lack of value/worth/significance, but it seems to be a play on the word for "white" in various languages [it also rhymes with "wanker" - is that accidental?]. The Crosses [with a large "C"] were called "daggers" by the noughts. On the surface, this comes from the shape of a cross, but the word does resemble "nigger". Again, is that intentional?

I am told that there are further books in the series. I may investigate them in due course, but now I need to listen to the Bookclub programme [late again!].

What I'm reading ...

I have started Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.

Another Book Club book and I running late again - the programme is only a week away. Still, it seems to be a reasonably straightforward read. It is described as "fiction for young adults" and my daughters assure me that it's a good read.

Teacher Man - by Frank McCourt

As expected, this was a good read. McCourt is a fine story teller and the best story is always one's own. Here he's relating his years in New York, with a brief sojourn in Dublin, when he embarked upon his teaching career. His perception of what teaching is - or can be - is quite inspirational. Kids reading recipe books, as if they were poetry, accompanied by improvised music - and all that in an English class!

The book is serious, but not gloomy, and has its humorous moments. He paints very vivid pictures and his powers of observation make you feel like you were there.

I'm left hoping that there's more to tell. Will there be a 4th book?

What I'm reading ...

I have started Teacher Man by Frank McCourt.

I needed something a bit lighter to read and though this would fit the bill. I read McCourt's first book - Angela's Ashes - before it became really well-known. Then I got his second -'Tis - as soon as it came out. So I have been looking forward to this, the third volume of his autobiography, for quite a while.

It's a nice read, so far. I do like a well-written autobiography - the reality of it just works better than even the best fiction.

We Need to Talk About Kevin - by Lionel Shriver

This is a remarkable book. It basically tells the story from Kevin's birth up until a while after he committed the massacre. The mechanism of telling it by means of a series of letters is not totally original, but is very effective and, by the end of the book, seems the only way that it could have been told.

The book is beautifully written and well deserved the Orange Prize.

The author is very observant and puts things into words that one may have thought, but never been able to express, for example:

We have explicit expectations of ourselves in specific situations - beyond expectations: they are requirements. Some of these are small: If we are given a surprise party, we will be delighted. Others are sizeable: If a parent dies, we will be grief-stricken. But perhaps in tandem with these expectations is the private fear that we will fail convention in the crunch. That we will receive the fateful phone call and our mother is dead and we feel nothing. I wonder if this quiet, unutterable little fear is even keener than the fear of the bad news itself: that we will discover ourselves to be monstrous.

Her descriptive prose is very evocative:

As ever, I marveled at your appetite, recently revived; you may have been the last WASP in America who still regularly breakfasted on two eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast. I could never manage more than coffee, but I loved the sizzle of smoked pork, the fragrance of browning bread, and the general atmosphere of relish for the day ahead that this ritual fostered. The sheer vigor with which you prepared this feast must have scrubbed your arteries of its consequences.

Her skill with metaphor is outstanding. Instead of using them for effect, they are always used to say something that would be harder in "straight" text, for example:

For about five minutes no one said anything, and then we gradually resumed the pretense of an ordinary morning, making no mention of Kevin's outburst the way polite people are meant to pretend they didn't notice the release of a load fart. Still the smell lingered, if less of gas than of cordite.

This book has the key elements that make me enjoy reading: it has a beginning, middle and end; the characters are well drawn; the pace is just right and keeps me turning the pages; there is a very unexpected twist at the end that really makes you draw breath.

Although this is a shocking story, it is not the stuff of nightmares. It's a tale which will stay with me for a long time.

What I'm reading ...

I have started We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

Straight on to the next Bookclub book - I am getting behind, as I don't read fast enough.

This book is about a kid who carried out a high school massacre in the US. It is told in the form of a series of letters from his mother to her estranged husband.

I was surprised to discover that the author is female - the name would suggest otherwise.

Holidays in Hell - by P J O'Rourke

I enjoyed this book. PJO's cynicism and occasional outrageous statements amused me. But at the same time, he paints vivid pictures of the places he went and the people he found there. The destinations were various political "hot spots" and other places in the news at the time of writing [mid-1980s]. My only problem is trying to remember what all the politics was about back then - a lot's happened in the world in the last 20 years.

I am bemused about the title. He's an American, but he's using the word "holiday" in the English sense, where they would normally say "vacation". Perhaps it should have been "Vacations in Valhalla".

Time to listen to the Bookclub programme now ...

What I'm reading ...

I have started Holidays in Hell by P J O'Rourke.

This is the next Bookclub selection. It's actually a book I'd had on my shelf for quite a while. I like travel writing and autobiography. I think the best travel writing tends to be of an autobiographical nature and that's what this is. So I'm looking forward to it. I will try to read it more quickly, as the programme goes out in a week's time ...

Margrave Of The Marshes by John Peel & Sheila Ravenscroft

Well, the verdict after reading this book is: yes, John Peel is someone I'd have liked to meet. I have a clear impression that he really was the guy he portrayed on the radio. I said before that I felt that I knew him. I guess I now feel that I know him a bit better.

The book is very nicely put together. Part 1 is a series of numbered chapters, which is a lightly edited [I think] rendition of the material that John was in the process of writing when he died. Part 2 was written by Sheila to finish of the story and takes the form of continuous text, with no chapters as such. This sounds odd, but works well.

I am aware that I am a slow reader and, at present, I don't get that much time for reading [compared with when I'm travelling]. I am normally keen to get through a book, as there are so many more on my shelf. In this case, I was more reluctant and seemed to read more and more slowly, even though it was well-written. I just realised why: I knew what the end of the story would be and was not in a hurry to get there...

What I'm reading ...

I have started Margrave Of The Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft

I was rather upset when John Peel died suddenly in late 2004 - I felt I'd lost a friend. I wasn't alone - many people seemed to be affected by his early death. Generally, I don't "do celebrities"; most celebs are, IMHO, rather talentless individuals who happened to be in the right place at the right time. JP was different. Anyone who listened to him on the radio felt that he was a personal friend. He always seems so open and accessible. This biography, started by John and finished by his widow and family will, I'm sure be interesting reading. I have a feeling he was a "what you see is what you get" kind of guy. We'll see. My list of "people I'd most like to have a beer/chat/dinner with" seems to get shorter by the day ...

Flashman - by George MacDonald Fraser

This is the story of a thoroughly unlikable chap - a cad or a bounder, if ever I came across one. This terminology says it all really, as the story is set in the early 19th century. It's a rather unlikely romp through India and Afghanistan with our hero doing very little heroic, but having the luck of the devil. It has very good pace - a true adventure story, but with a tongue firmly in cheek. I enjoyed reading the book and will seek out others in the series. I look forward to listening to the Bookclub programme now.