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.