Small Rant...

I see on today's BBC website that several top British authors have approached the government about declining standards in children's literacy asking that children be encouraged to read for an hour each day. On Belle's night out on Friday themymblesdaughter and I had a quick conversation about the crisis in publishing in Britain. What crisis I hear you ask, well the one that means that the best selling books each year are generally connected with a film, television programme or have a celebrity endorsement, which means that its hard for new writers, both fiction and non-fiction, to get published, let alone make some money from their efforts. The sublime example of this was on Jonathan Ross on Friday night, Kerry Katona was on promoting her new work of fiction by Kerry Katona, which to be fair she admitted wasn't actually written by her. I rest my case..

Stunned...

I've been out and about today, meeting someone about finding some more work, and at the lovely Christmas lunch held by one of my clients and while I was out the sneaky OU published our results. I've just checked my results and I've gone and passed my last course for my degree. So on Monday I will be accepting a honours degree in literature. Whoo hooo.

You have to read this book

Every so often a book comes along that I recommend to all my friends, last year's was This Thing of Darkness and this is the one for this year. Buy or borrow this book as its certainly one of the best books I have ever read. Its well written and has an engaging central character, Sophie Riedesel, who grows from precocious child to woman during the course of the book.

I know some people won't want to read the book as it is set mainly in 1930s Berlin and so is, inevitably, harrowing. Sophie's friends are Jewish and ex-circus performers, some of whom are disabled, and she has an autistic brother, all of whom she tries to protect from the horrific policies that are put in place towards the 'inferior'. I am not ashamed to admit that I cried as these policies began to take their inevitable toll on her friends and her family. But this is also a beautiful and enduring love story.

Its also helped me to understand how events in Germany unfolded during the 1930s and and how something similar could easily happen again, if it hasn't already. Zimler shows ordinary people having to decide whether or not to stand up for what they believe is right, in the knowledge that by doing this they would inevitably put themselves, their families and friends in grave peril and how the smallest compromises can lead to the acceptance of a great evil.

I'm sure a few people have been put off reading this book by the Kabbalist framework, don't be, it works and makes sense within the book.

I'm supposed not to be buying any more books until I've reduced my piles of books to be read (which extend along my hall) but I'm now in the process of acquiring other books by Zimler because if they are half as good as this one they will be worth it.

Seven Things

I see Belle's tagged me for the Seven Things meme, which I will do, but not today because all I can think about is the seven bloody times I've had to pull my washing machine out into the centre of my kitchen because of an annoying alarm telling me that my hose is kinked, when it isn't and the pump has been checked too. Even though the machine is still under warranty this is one of those problems they charge you for fixing so I want to be sure before I go to the expense of having an engineer tell me I'm imagining things! I thought I'd cracked the problem by leaving the machine pulled out all over the weekend but obviously not as I can hear it bleeping away again, sigh.

Another Day Another Book

One of my old English teachers used to start every class with "It was a dark and stormy night..." and expect one of us poor students to come up with something witty and intelligent to follow on, we didn't, ever. But last night was a dark and stormy night, so stormy that it felt as if the house had been transplanted from its snug London suburb to the Yorkshire moors, with Kathy Earnshaw's shade, looking remarkably like Kate Bush, dancing around outside howling to come in.

So rather than trying to sleep I finished reading The Savage Garden. Hmmm. Its a nice book, but strangely unsatisfying. As I read I found my mind wandering to other things, of which more in a moment. The book is a mystery tale which has echoes of The Da Vinci Code as Dante's Inferno is the key to the story of the garden. This is very interesting and has encouraged me to reread Dante, but somehow it just doesn't work, while the contemporary mystery which is intertwined throughout the story just isn't mysterious or compelling. The best I can say about this book is that it feels well researched and Mark Mills isn't a bad writer, but something went slightly wrong as it just didn't grab me the way a mystery novel should.

One of the characters in the book is an up and coming sculptor and the book lists contemporary sculptors, one of which is Elisabeth Frink, one of my favourite artists. My very first job was working for an embezzler, I'm serious - he was eventually sent to prison in the US for embezzlement and allegedly found God while inside, but that is a whole other story - who had a sculpture park and herb garden at his house in Hampshire, I absolutely promise I am not making this up! Anyway he had two Frink heads in his sculpture park, In Memoriam I and In Memoriam II which were placed together in a walled garden, these two pieces of art were so full of power and emotion, I used to sneak out of the office and just spend time sitting by them, trying to understand them. There were other sculptures in the park by Henry Moore, Miro and even Barbara Hepworth, but none of them affected me as much as the two Frinks. Her Walking Madonna at Salisbury is also amazing and powerful, but I can't find an image of it at the moment to link to. Her works are everywhere, London, Chatsworth House, Winchester, Belfast and worldwide, if you get a chance to see one or see a collection do, I promise it will be an experience, whatever you think of her work you won't be indifferent I promise.

Books and Stuff

When I started this blog it was supposed to be about books, not quite sure what happened there. Anyway if you've been reading the blog you'll have seen the posting about being reader which was written in response to a friend of mine who can only read a pristine copy of a book, preferably one that has never been sullied by human hands and if the cover is creased heaven forfend.

Setting aside all that the literature degree brings (there is just about a week to the results and I do feel sick) one of the things I demand of a book is that it fulfils whatever criteria the writer set out to fulfil, so its a thriller, it thrills, if its a detective novel there's some investigation, etc.

But I digress, I've just finished reading The House at Riverton and, to my surprise I really enjoyed it. Its one of those Gothic novels set in the first half of the twentieth century, with a mysterious tragedy haunting the present and a big English country house at the centre, the kind of story that generally rocks my boat. Its well written and I certainly didn't feel Kate Morton reaching for a metaphor or getting carried away with her own cleverness, like Henry James and Ian McEwan, I think I am the only person in the world who loathed Atonement.

This is the first book recommended by Richard and Judy that I've enjoyed in a while, and makes me feel a little easier about the collection of Richard and Judy recommendations I was seduced into buying by the Book People earlier this year. Sadly I really didn't like the first two books I read from the collection, Looking After Matthew, which was at best an OK read until the ending, or Relentless, I love thrillers, but Relentless neither thrilled or engaged me, if you want a good thriller my advice is to read Christopher Brookmyre.

When I was at school...

I wanted to be a writer of some kind, but the teachers at my school said no that's not a career, you need to do something practical to earn money. So, partly because my parents had paid a small fortune for my education and partly because then I was a superficially compliant girl, I followed their advice and chose something else that made them, but necessarily me, happy. Of course as soon as I left school I did something completely different just to be annoying, finally falling into my career by chance in my twenties. Don't get me wrong on a good day I still kind of, sort of, like my job, but today, some 20 years after I left school, I printed out the 130 pages of my NaNoWriMo novel and I want to look all those teachers in the eye and tell them "You were wrong. I am a writer."