The Other Hand

I went to Italy at the weekend. We ate watermelon and went to the circus - there were tigers and an elephant, it probably wasn't ethical but it was exciting all the same. Everything was so sunny and pretty and foreign there, it seemed amazing to me. And now I am back in my grey little country full of fatties and junkies and sheep. Depressing.



20. The Other Hand - Chris Cleave
The editor of this book has opted to forgo a blurb so as not to spoil the story for any potential readers, so I shall do the same. What I will say, is that this is a book that will make you look at ice cubes, pound coins and this country in a different way. It entwines horror with hope, beauty with brutality, and is - terribly - realistic, without being pessimistic. It shocking and funny and heartbreaking all at once, and is a book to be savoured, not gobbled. I am amazed at the ability of this man to narrate from the perspectives of two very different women so convincingly; his writing is exquisite, and hugely intelligent. This is a very important book.

The Graduate

Today I made scones and they were tasty. I'm so tired these days, I don't know what's wrong with me.



19. The Graduate - Charles Webb
Another car boot bargain, and another famous movie that I haven't seen. I'd bet that this is much better in film form, as it's really dialogue-heavy and what little prose there is often reads like stage directions rather than description - it's practically a screenplay. To be honest, I didn't like it. The sense of disillusionment was well done, but Ben is a thoroughly irritating protagonist and there was hardly any sense of place or of time at all. It was so insular, and the lack of communication between the characters infuriated me. No doubt this was to convey the essentially inane nature of life or the tenuity of relationships or something like that...whatever, it was still boring.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

I went to a car boot sale yesterday and got three books, two watches, a Friends DVD, a set of plane-shaped pin badges, a cup of tea and two cakes for a fiver. What a day.



18. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
As I am the only person in the western hemisphere who has never seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, I can't compare this novella with the movie. This is probably a good thing, because Audrey Hepburn is obviously so iconic and if I had seen it there's no way I'd be able to form my own image of Holly. She's such a great character, simple in some ways and yet totally enigmatic, so lively and likeable - she suits the length and pace of the story, short and fast. Capote's dialogue reminded me of Oscar Wilde a little bit, in the way that it really feels like you're hearing their speech rather than reading it, especially with Holly and O. J. Berman - it's as if the sounds are pre-formed, like your mind has no control over them. I loved all the stuff about gender and sexuality, too, for example: "Of course people couldn't help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit." That must have been so radical in the 50s. Hell, that's still quite radical now... Great little book.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

I passed! This is nothing short of a miracle.



17. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee - Rebecca Miller
My mum lent this to me; at first I was a bit unenthused, as the photo makes it look a bit like chick lit, which as we all know is the worst kind of 'lit' (except possibly misery lit, that's pretty vile as well). However, as it's by Arthur Miller's daughter I gave it a go out of interest, and it's actually very good - extremely well-written, clever and genuine. It's pretty action-packed (lots of affairs, quite a bit of sex, a touch of sadomasochism...) but it doesn't seem over the top at all; I actually thought it felt very balanced, with almost sparse use of detail at points. Her characterisation of Pippa is excellent, and she writes really well about the tensions of mother-daughter relationships. It's uplifting, in a bittersweet way. I should probably write something profound about having learnt my lesson about judging a book by its cover now, but I know I will continue to do so, so instead I give you this quote: "You're the Chicklet, not me!" - Gob Bluth.

Eclipse; Breaking Dawn

I have my driving theory test tomorrow and I am going to fail because I've been reading these books instead of that literary gem, The Highway Code. It's okay, I'll just sit on buses for the rest of my life - that way I'll be able to read while I travel! Can't do that while you're driving, you'll die! It all works out beautifully!



15. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer
I'll be honest, this was probably my least favourite part of the series; too much irritating teenage angst for my liking, and at 650 pages I thought it was a bit drawn-out. It felt like five parts filler to one part killer...like weakly diluted juice. I like my juice strong - strong and manly. It was still quite good, though. One of the things I really like about this series is that Stephenie Meyer doesn't shy away from the fact that teenagers actually have sex, which is still quite unusual in mainstream American youth fiction - I especially enjoyed the fact Edward is the 'responsible' one and that Bella is an aspiring nymphomaniac. Jolly good stuff.



16. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
This book surprised me in some ways. It's another long one (about 750 pages) and at the beginning I thought it seemed a bit convoluted and self-indulgent, with lots of unnecessary details and sub-plots. However, by the end you see that the whole series has actually been very cleverly structured - the seemingly trivial details and apparent loopholes from the books are all filled in to interweave with the main storyline, and everything ties up nicely at the end. It tied up a bit too nicely in some ways, but by that point I was so attached to the characters I cared more for their wellbeing than for realism or credibility. I will say this, though - Renesmee is a ridiculous name.
Overall, an thoroughly enjoyable series! I'm not quite sure what to do with myself now I've read it all. I suppose I shall sit and wait for the movie, starring Cedric Diggory. Fit.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

I am appalled. The Royal Mail - my occasional employer and lifelong friend, backbone of these British Isles and the hand that connects us to the lands across the sea - has failed me. My Stephenie Meyer books still haven't come. I feel like I'm a junkie and someone's promised me a nice bit of smack, but they've turned up at my house with some bills and a postcard for my brother instead and told me, "Oh, don't worry, it'll be here in 1 - 3 working days". Yes. That is exactly how I feel.



14. What's Eating Gilbert Grape - Peter Hedges
I'm not going to be able to write about this without comparing it to the film version, though to be honest the main I decided to read the original was so I could compare the two. I was actually quite surprised at how much was changed for the movie, especially as Peter Hedges, if Wikipedia is to be believed, wrote the screenplay - quite a few major characters are cut out, presumably to make room for Gilbert's romance with Becky, which isn't all that prominent in the book. The characters are different, too: Gilbert's anger and resentment is much stronger and far more apparent here (though that's largely because the story's written in first-person narrative) and I think he develops further than his film counterpart; Becky isn't quite as quirky as she is in the movie, more ethereal, and also much younger. I warmed to them both much more because of it. The tone is much dryer than that of the film, and the ending, though not altogether bleak, is a bit less Hollywood. On the whole I preferred the book because the story goes so much deeper and you get to know the characters better, but the film is still excellent - Leonardo DiCaprio is amazing in it.

New Moon

I haven't left the house today.



13. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer
God. This series is so addictive. It's so easy to fall into the story, and it's so nice and simple to read, at least compared to Flaubert and Rimbaud and all the other jazz I've been struggling through lately.
This was just as good as the first part - very similar in some ways, but I think Meyer develops the characters and plot enough to get away with the repetitive aspects. I liked how she managed to weave a lot of minor details from Twilight into the overall plot of the series. I love stuff like that, it's clever. The only real downside was that Edward Cullen (the heroine's vampire beau) is absent for most of the story. This made me sad, for I too am in love with him.
I ordered the third and fourth parts on Amazon on Saturday and if they don't come tomorrow I may cry. No, really.

Twilight

Fear not, my friends, I have not abandoned the great art of literature. Nor have I drowned, converted to Hasidic Judaism or developed a liking for hard drugs. Over the past few weeks I've been busy getting through my set texts for uni - I did think about writing about them on here but I decided against it. I want this page to be about books I actually choose to read, and I doubt anybody ever read La Tentation de Saint Antoine for laughs. Oh, and we got two kittens! They are insanely cute and have been the object of much of my love and attention.




12. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
I resisted this book for a while. I kept seeing it in the bestseller's section in Borders and thinking it looked like my cup of tea, but as it's a "teen novel" I thought it might be a bit young for me. Then I remembered I still watch Pingu and look about fourteen, so I bought it. Oh lordy, I'm glad I did. (And as it happened the girl at the till where I paid, who was probably a couple of years older than me, starting gushing about how much she loved it and its sequels, so I didn't feel so bad.)
This is about a 17-year-old girl who moves to a tiny little town in Washington to live with her dad, and falls in love with a boy who turns out to be a vampire. Awesome.
One of the things I really liked about this was how accurate the writer's depiction of being a teenager is. She avoids all stereotypes or teen speak (something other writers seem incapable of doing), and lot of the stuff she wrote about - the awkwardness, the obsessiveness - really reminded me of how I felt in school, even though, alas, my years there were sorely lacking in vampire romance. The writing is clever and thoughtful, and the plot is well paced. It is totally over-romanticized, so I can see why it's so popular with teenage girls, but that actually works well with the tone of the book. It doesn't seem corny.
I shall leave this here as I want to start reading the sequel now. Right now.

The Outcast

I currently feel so ill I can barely move. Super!



11. The Outcast - Sadie Jones
I have been very mistrusting of Richard and Judy's Book Club since they recommended PS, I Love You (without a doubt the worst piece of literature ever written, ever, including the ten-page novel I wrote about two adventure-seeking dolphins I wrote when I was six) a few years ago, but I thought this looked alright.
It was excellent. In short, it's about a boy growing up in a village in England in the 50s, and what happens to him after his mother dies. The writing is just brilliant - I loved the pace, the characters were really believable and the description is really sparse but so effective. The atmosphere was excellent, too - very heavy and claustrophobic, it felt really authentic. Just a very good book.

Il ne vous reste qu'une photo à prendre

It's raining but my Italian is progressing nicely. Ho fame. Voglio mangiarlo. See?



10. Il ne vous reste qu'une photo à prendre - Laurent Graff
This is about a French guy in his 50s who goes on a weekend away to Rome with his girlfriend. While he's there, a man comes up to them, takes a photo of them and then says "You only have one photo left to take", gives him a card with his address on it and walks away, all mysterious and that. It turns out the guy has been chosen for this game with four other people; they go on a trip together and are only allowed to take one last photo, after which they are 'out'.
It's a good story and everything, but I thought the writer could have developed everything a bit more - the characters, the plot, and especially the setting. I like to read a book and feel like I was actually there, in the time and place, afterwards. I never got that with this, and I never felt much for the characters one way or the other. It was really nicely written though. Not a bad read altogether.

The Boy Who Kicked Pigs

I didn't read much last week. Instead, I baked two crumbles, went to the circus, played basketball and started learning Italian.



9. The Boy Who Kicked Pigs - Tom Baker
Another grotesque, illustrated tale by a celebrity of sorts that I bought for about three quid in HMV (see The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy). This is about a truly horrible child called Robert Caligari who develops a deep hatred for humanity and finally gets his comeuppance for all his evils deeds. It's demented, funny and well-written, but not as weirdly endearing as Tim Burton's stories are.

What Was Lost

I want to go to Narnia.



8. What Was Lost - Catherine O'Flynn
This is about a little girl in Birmingham who goes missing in the 80s, and some unhappy people working in a shopping centre 20 years later, who try to find out what happen to her. The plot is really clever, it all links together very neatly without any ridiculous coincidences or anything. The sense of miserable monotony of the lives of the people in the shopping centre is very, very convincing - sometimes I felt thoroughly depressed whilst reading it. I felt really sorry for the characters, too, the way they'd wasted their lives. Sad. Overall a really good read, I just didn't like all the jumps in narrative and perspective, and the way she wrote 'mom' instead of 'mum'. I checked with my Brummie friend and they do not say that there. Over-Americanization. Shocking.

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories

7. The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories - Tim Burton
Tim Burton is so weird. I like him.
This is a book of short illustrated poems (some only a line, some 5 or 6 stanzas) about strange outcast children. They have Brie for heads or nails in their eyes or are part microwave blender, stuff like that. Burton is a good writer and his drawings are wonderfully bizarre. His mix of innocence and gore works perfectly, he creates characters who are freaky and adorable at the same time, much like his movies. Or The Mighty Boosh. The stories are all a bit tragic but at the same time they seem to celebrate weirdness, which is what I like best about them.
My favourites characters are Jimmy, the Hideous Penguin Boy, Stain Boy, Melonhead and the Zombie who was originally from France.

La Mécanique du Coeur

I have been busy out hunting this week. Jobs and flats, not foxes. So far I have caught nothing.



6. La Mécanique du Coeur
This book has its own soundtrack which is a bit special.
It's about a boy born in my very own town of Edinburgh on the coldest day ever in the year 1874. His heart is really weak so this midwife on top of Arthur's Seat makes him a sort of pacemaker from wood and needles and stuff. She tells him he can never fall in love, because his heart couldn't stand all the emotion. But he does, with a little Spanish singer. He ends up puncturing his love rival's eye in a sort of fight and has to run away from the police, so he goes to Andalucia to find the girl. On his way he meets Jack the Ripper and George Méliès. As you do.
I loved this story. It was cute and magical and imaginative and sort of old-fashioned. It wasn't brilliantly written, but it was still very nice. I don't know if the author has ever actually been to Edinburgh though, because he seemed to think you can run up and down Arthur's Seat in five minutes. This is very wrong.
Very nice. Lovely, lovely, nice, lovely, nice.
Apparently they're making a film with Luc Besson. Tim Burton or Jean-Pierre Jeunet would have been better.

Le Coeur découvert

I am obsessed with Ritz biscuits. I am thinking about them right now.



5. Le Coeur découvert - Michel Tremblay
This is an odd book. It's set in Montréal in the 80s and is about two guys in a relationship, Jean-Marc is like forty and Mathieu is 24. The first two-thirds of the story is about them getting together and being together and then not being together and generally faffing about about being annoying. The last third gets more complicated as it involves their relationship with Mathieu's four-year-old son, his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, his family, his mum, Jean-Marc's friends... which is all much more interesting than the nonsense surrounding the feeble beginnings of their relationship. I suppose I must have liked something about it because I kept reading, but on the whole it was a bit dull. I don't see what the characters liked about each other. I didn't really like them. They were bland. They were beige. They were Belgium.
To be fair, in some ways it was really realistic, mostly because of the way the narrative veered off and the addition of details and anecdotes that didn't really have any point to them, but it lacked style. I have two more Tremblay books lying around that I've been meaning to read so I really hope this isn't his best...

Kitchen; When I Was Five I Killed Myself

It's supposed to be summer but it's raining all the time. The seasons lie in this country.



3. Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto
Whenever I read Japanese literature I have the feeling that I'm missing out on something. It's like the English is a mist - behind it I can glimpse something else, but it's never quite clear what it is. I tried learning Japanese but I got confused at the katakana and gave up. All I remember how to say is 'this is a pen'. Kore wa enpitsu desu. Actually, that might be wrong. Don't go to Japan and say that, you may get ridiculed.
Sadly I can only judge by the translation, but I have judged nonetheless - Banana Yoshimoto is an amazing writer. This book had two stories in it, 'Kitchen' and 'Moonlight Shadow'. They are both about death and loneliness, of which she obviously has a very good understanding, and they are both beautifully written. She writes as if the story is a fragile thing to be handled with great care. She is one of those writers who you think, she seems like such a nice person. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe she's a psycho bitch. But when you read this, you think, these words are so lovely and sad, she must be lovely and sad too.



4. When I Was Five I Killed Myself - Howard Buten
This is written in the words of an 8-year-old boy who has been sent to some sort of child rehabilitation centre for doing something bad to a girl in his class. Writing from a kid's perspective is not easy. Not for an adult, anyway. It's probably very easy for a child. Most of the time when I read books like that I think they're a bit rubbish and 'kids just wouldn't say that' and stuff, but this is excellent, he captures his voice and his writing style perfectly. It seems very genuine, as well as being sad and funny and a bit shocking, but not just for the sake of it. I really cared about the little boy, which is probably why I finished it so quickly. This was written in 1981. I think it was a bit ahead of its time.

So far I am pleased with my birthday books.

The Picture of Dorian Gray; Eeeee Eee Eeee

I turned 21 on Friday. I suppose that means I'm a proper adult now. Though in this country you're technically an adult when you're 18. At least I think so...that's when you can drink and everything. The ability to legally purchase alcohol is apparently more indicative of adulthood that the ability to legally wed and have children is, which seems a bit dumb to me. I don't know any 18-year-olds who are actually proper adults, anyway. Most 18-year-olds are retards. When I was 18 I wore Superdry clothing and weird baggy jeans. I listened to this band called the Starting Line a lot. One time I dyed my hair dark and when I walked into my Russian class Jeremy said "Oh my God!"

But now I am 21. I have decided to make a record of every book I read during this year. I will write what I want to write about the books I want to read instead of writing what I have to write about the books I have to read, and that will be nice.



1. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
For the record, this is not the edition I read. I read one of those green ones that costs 2 quid. It had some letters missing. But if Dorian Gray actually looked like that then I really don't see what all the fuss was all about.
This book is very famous. There is nothing I can say about it that hasn't been said before, except that I liked it. It was gothic and quite dramatic and the language was extravagant. Oscar Wilde has an amazing way of bringing characters to life - I heard their voices so clearly. I liked Lord Henry a lot. I liked his views. He made me wish I was a dapper Victorian gentleman. In reality, if I lived a hundred years ago I'd probably be an impoverished teuchter eating raw potatoes or something, but I think I would have liked to have lived in London and prance around high society and care about nothing. It would be lovely.




2. Eeeee Eee Eeee - Tao Lin
This was weird and genius. Weirdly, genius. It's hard to explain the plot, or lack thereof...basically it is about some people in America who are bored. Bears and dolphins talk and cry and murder celebrities. It made me happy, because it was so simple but so brilliant. Tao Lin probably uses about five hundred works altogether in this, mostly 'Pulitzer Prize' and 'motherfucker' and 'killing spree', but it was amazing. Reading it was like being in a dream. My favourite line was:
And think, "I wish I could punch Sean Penn in Sean Penn's face".
It was beautiful nonsense. It was pointless and about pointlessness, and yet it made a lot of sense to me, because there was a point. None of it made sense! It was perfect!
I will give this book to everyone I like.