you will want this.

The Secret History and The Little Friend in a signed, limited and boxed edition. I am swooning already.

You can find more details here and here.

51. My conditioner-to-shampoo ratio is incredibly unbalanced.  I’d say it’s about four parts conditioner to each half part shampoo.  Let’s put it this way: I’m still on the same shampoo bottle that I brought to Europe in August, and on that trip I brought two bottles of conditioner.

52. I have all of my dogs’ names picked out for any foreseeable dog I might have.  The first three names are pretty much set in stone as my favorites, but the rest rotate based on my mood.

53. Jack McBrayer cracks me up.  He doesn’t even need to do anything to make he laugh.  His existing is enough.

54. Right now, I really want a nectarine.  If I could have any magic power, I would choose to be able to conjure my favorite foods at their seasonal peaks out of thin air.  No food miles, just shazam! and nectarine.

55. I read either Memoirs of a Geisha, The Secret History or Bel Canto at least once a year.  Last year I read Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto twice, and I haven’t read either Arthur Golden’s or Donna Tartt’s novels yet in 2009, so I better get to it.

I finally read Beautiful Children by Charles Bock, one of those splashy debut novels the NYT slobbered all over last year. I waited until it was readily available in the library, just as I had Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, so put off am I by people I think no longer have to work and can just write; I am constitutionally incapable of contributing to their royalties. (And must they also be so fresh-faced?) I know this reveals a certain poverty of spirit, but it’s a private little spite that causes no measurable harm to others. I think I’ll work on my explosive temper first, then take a long look at my relationship to food. 

When I do finally sneak a free peek at a book post-splash, it’s with the sincere hope that it really won’t be of much account. How gratifying when Special Topics turned out to be a thin gruel of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, with some drawings thrown in, as if to say, “But this one has drawings!” Whither the sexual intrigue, the bacchanal bloodletting, the thousand or so extra pages of gravitas?

But Beautiful Children. I was getting a migraine that afternoon and downed some caffeinated headache powders, which relieved the pain but kept me up all night, and the novel made for fine company. Set in Las Vegas (though, thankfully, rarely in casinos–to me the only thing more dull than reading about casinos is going to them), it mostly orbits an obnoxious twelve-year-old boy who goes missing and the people overlapping that: his parents, the young man last seen with him, and the stray punks and homeless kids whose ranks he may have joined. I liked it the way I like a Richard Price novel, with a recurring mild surprise that the story has captivated me against expectations, and a sense of even the basest character bathed in the golden glow of the author’s attentions.

Reading all night is sort of like watching TV all night–enjoyable in the moment, though not much lingers past a slight quease from having glutted oneself. It has become a rare pleasure for me to give over a night of sleep to a book. Until this recent headache-powder-fueled stint, I’m not sure I’ve done it since I had children. The closest I came was in the weeks following my sons’ births, when I was up around the clock anyway, and they were still manageable enough for me to nurse and hold open a book. What strange juxtapositions I’d choose: a biography of Genghis Khan, then a holocaust memoir; Gibson and Sterling’s steampunk The Difference Engine, followed by Lily Tuck’s The News from Paraguay, which shocked the hell out of everyone when it won the National Book Award in 2004, not because it wasn’t a terrific book, but because it had been virtually invisible until that moment, reportedly having sold fewer than two thousand copies. I have to root for a book with a backstory like that.

I have no words right now, no ability to make decisions and not much joy.  It’s my birthday next week, I haaaaaaaaaaaaate my birthday.

♥

Following on from yesterday’s post about reading at leisure and just going off at a tangent I was mulling through my shelves and spotted one that has been getting no attention since I moved into my new house. Now I am a big fan of seeing other people’s shelves on their blogs, for example Claire of Paperback Reader has done a series of colour co-ordinated shelves which looked stunning. I tried this back in February and though it looked lovely I couldn’t ever find anything and so that became a bit of a nightmare, if an aesthetically pleasing on, I know it works wonderfully well for a lot of people though.

When I moved house back in July I inherited lots of new shelves in my room as well as the shelves “for books I have read” in the lounge. The question was how to organise them so I did a hardback shelf, a review paperback shelf, a non fiction shelf, a mixture shelf (books by Daphne, Man Booker winners and dare I say it books I haven’t finished), a short reads shelf and the shelf of today’s post The Blinking Big Books shelf.

Now some of the titles have been must reads for ages and I think one or two of them may end up in my packing for my long weekend up north that’s coming up. The ones I have heard lots about and am looking forward to reading are…

• Small Island – Andrea Levy (on of my Gran’s fav’s)
• A Widow for One Year – John Irving
• The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
• The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
• Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
• Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
• The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver (another of Gran’s favourites)
• The American Boy – Andrew Taylor
• Beyond Black – Hilary Mantel
• Crime & Punishment – Dostoevsky

The ones I am not so sure about which have either been bought for me, sent to me or randomly purchased in shops ‘because they look nice’ (and could do with your thought on, though do give them on the ones above too) are…

• Of Human Bondage – W Somerset Maugham
• At Swim Two Boys – Jamie O’Neil
• The Impressionist – Hari Kunzru (one my Mum very much liked)
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marissa Pessl
• The Forsythe Saga – John Galsworthy
• Rebecca’s Tale – Sally Beauman (a Rebecca sequel/prequel)
• The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
• The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters – G. W. Dahlquist
• The Madness of a Seduced Woman – Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
• The Grave Diggers Daughter – Joyce Carol Oates

There are a few more (such as the book We Need To Talk About Kevin that I may try and re-read after failing miserably) but that’s quite enough for now. I would just like your thoughts on them especially as I always find really long books quite hard work. I don’t know why this is, one possible explanation is the fact I think about how many shorter books I could be reading. Or the fact they are a bit of nightmare to carry around with you when you are commuting, though I won’t be for quite a while so that’s another excuse down. It could of course just be I am reading the wrong ones?

What are your thoughts on great big books? Which have been your favourites? Do you avoid them at all costs? Do I have any gems above that I simply must read now? Anything big bookish to add?

Dusting the Greats is a blog-in-blog about literature. Unpacking crates of books – the books that made my generation what we are – I try to remember why they were important. Today: Donna Tartt’s Secret History.

Four years ago I put down Ulysses having stated that, it does, indeed, end in a full stop. Then I carried it, along with my other pretensions, into the attic. I barred the attic door with five different locks. I hid the keys well. I left town. And I did not look back.

An infinite number of chick-lit, bit-lit, frock-fic and Vouge later, this weekend saw the resurrection of my past life. 90 plus boxes and bags of Literature have been moved from their dusty confines to the floor, table, bathroom and kitchen sink of my present abode. There they will get a good cleaning, before being installed in the pristine shelves of The New Apartment.

Or so I thought.

Last night, after 48 hours of uncomplaining and tender lugging, carrying and lumbering, the Better Man sat me down with a calculator and a scale sketch of The New Apartement. Apparently, it was time for a reality check. If I were to have all my books up, and he all his, we would be left with a negative amount of space for anything else.

So, cutting a long story short: join me as I sort trough the Greats and the Pretentious, the Influential and the Hardly Recognized, the Speckled with Damp and the Smudged With Chocolate.

First out:

Author: Donna Tartt.
Title: The Secret History.
Language: Swedish.
First Read: 1995 on holiday in Greece
Number of times read: Astronomical, mostly in bath or while treating parents with contempt
It influenced: Choice of major, choice of cigarettes, entire sense of self between ages of 14 and 18
Opinion today: Naïve, over-laden, but sweet, like memory of childhood birthday cake
Shelf or Attic: Shelf on strenght of time served.

The Book Taped and Battered

That’s right – I’ve got black thumb disease. It struck a couple of nights ago just when I was finishing my last post. I suddenly noticed that my thumb looked extremely peculiar. I knew I hadn’t bumped or banged it, it didn’t hurt and it wasn’t swollen – it was just black. Approximately 2 inches of it. I figured it would no doubt have disappeared by morning. Not so. It was just as odd and black next day.

Less black today

That was the day I had to go for bloodwork at the local vampire lab so I figured I’d better get my platelets checked as I have a nasty disorder called ITP in my not too distant past that almost carried me off in 2003. It manifests itself with my auto-immune system destroying the platelets in my blood and preventing my blood from clotting. My wee brother Robin saw me at that time and said I looked just like a Dalmatian dog. Made me feel a lot better.

As I didn’t have a call from the doc today I assume my platelet count must be OK. My GP has installed a telephone barrier that requires one to go through three different stages to finally end up getting a message to say they will get back to me within 48 hours. We’ll see.

Meanwhile as witness the photo, the black thumb is fading somewhat. I guess we’ll just have to write it off as a mystery.

It was ccccooolllldddd today. We woke up to a light snow this morning and the cat didn’t want to go out. A sure sign of the approaching winter. 

It's north up here!

No cute stories about local wildlife today. Only thing I can tell is the raccoons got in to the covered patio and ripped up a bag of garbage that we left out accidentally. Sometimes you have to pay for carelessness and we did. Raccoons are dirty little buggers as they poop with joy as they get into the garbage so we had that to deal with too. Not cute at all.

I know Joe is waiting to use the laptop so I will not be going on too long tonight. But I must mention the wonderful book I am reading. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Jamie passed this one on to me and another called The Little Friend. Both are wonderful. I do hope she’s working on some more because I could get addicted. She is simply an amazing writer.

Lev Grossman is the book critic for Time and the author of “The Magicians”, a novel. In this great piece in the WSJ, he writes about the “plot against plot”–the abandonment of story in 20th century literary fiction–and the new trend in fiction to embrace story again.

I’m a huge lover of modern and postmodern fiction. But I do think we as novelists owe as much to our readers as we do to art. The current pendulum swing back towards hybridizing literary fiction with genre fiction to make the former readable is good for writers and good for readers. It only makes what we write that much more relevant, because what use is the most artfully written novel if it interests no one? Novelists have a lot to learn from the challenge of being entertaining.

n.b.: I had jumped on the bandwagon without even realizing it–my new novel is literary fiction inspired by graphic novels. ‘Cause I’m trendy like that I guess.

The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance. They’re forging connections between literary spheres that have been hermetically sealed off from one another for a century. Look at Cormac McCarthy, who for years appeared to be the oldest living Modernist in captivity, but who has inaugurated his late period with a serial-killer novel followed by a work of apocalyptic science fiction. Look at Thomas Pynchon—in “Inherent Vice” he has swapped his usual cumbersome verbal calisthenics for the more maneuverable chassis of a hard-boiled detective novel.

This is the future of fiction. The novel is finally waking up from its 100-year carbonite nap. Old hierarchies of taste are collapsing. Genres are hybridizing. The balance of power is swinging from the writer back to the reader, and compromises with the public taste are being struck all over the place. Lyricism is on the wane, and suspense and humor and pacing are shedding their stigmas and taking their place as the core literary technologies of the 21st century.

via Good Novels Don’t Have to Be Hard Work – WSJ.com.

I should hate The Secret History by Donna Tartt. The (mostly rich) characters attend a small, exclusive and undoubtedly expensive American college but even that isn’t elitist enough for them. They have formed a tiny coterie around a  professor who chooses his students and who is apparently untouchable by the university authorities. They study Latin and Greek to an exceptionally high standard and are regarded with suspicion by other students. Apart from Richard, that is. Richard is from a poor background but lies about this, partly to try to get in with Francis, Camilla, Charles, Henry and Bunny and partly to escape from himself. These facts alone make my toes curl. I detest elitism. I’m not rich – never have been – so find it hard to identify with the rich kids. As for Richard, well, I suppose his is closest to my background but unlike him I’m not at all ashamed of my working class roots. Although I studied Latin at school, it was far from my favourite subject and as for the rest of the Classics … it’s all Greek to me.

So what’s the attraction? This is a book to get lost in. It is a different world and although it’s one I thought I’d hate, in fact I love it. Classical myths form an essential part of the plot and this is perhaps what hooked me in. As a child, I loved to read about Roman and Greek gods and one in particular has a key role in the novel. Four of the characters try to reenact Dionysian rites and in doing so, Henry accidentally kills an innocent farmer. The novel is essentially an exploration of guilt and atonement. When Bunny (he and Richard were excluded from the rites) starts to uncover the guilty secret, and then to blackmail the group, they decide to kill him. They then have to live with the misery of having killed one of their friends.  

The Secret History is as perfect a book as you can get. At its most basic level it is a crime novel (though we know from the outset who the killers are) but it is multi layered and explores the nature of beauty as well as guilt and has a central theme of ‘the fatal flaw’. It takes me back to a time when reading was an adventure and books thrilled me. I’ve read it six times. I have two copies; one is pristine, the other is falling apart but I can’t bear to let it go. I’m constantly searching for something as good. I haven’t read Tartt’s other novel, The Little Friend, because I fear it will disappoint.

It’s worth noting that there are many books out there with the tagline reminiscent of The Secret History. Ignore these – they are nothing like the original.

Everytime I am confronted with articles or questionnaires about favourite books and writers, I decide to make my own list and give up after a few minutes. It’s not that I don’t have enough to fill a list, I have too many favourites and I fear that I have forgotten some of the ones I particularly loved. I want to do justice to that list. In author interviews, this is one of the most frequently asked questions and I can almost visualise their quavering when they have to announce to the world their favourite books and authors. They always start or end by saying that this is by no means absolute and it could change tomorrow. That is how I feel too. But there are a number of titles I will always love because of their impact on my thinking at a particular point in my life, and I thought it would be a good exercise to give it a try. Put it down on paper, so to speak.

I generally read a lot of mysteries, historical mysteries, science fiction and fantasy and general/literary fiction and of course, some classics, once in a while. When I was a student I went through a French phase where everything had to originate from the Latin Quarter: Sartre, Beauvouir and Camus. I grew up with the refrain ‘Mama est mort’ as Albert Camus’ L’Etranger (The Stranger or The Outsider in English) is my father’s all time favourite book, a remnant of his student days at the Sorbonne in the late ’60s.

I will be putting up lists divided by genre in the coming weeks but will start with the most general. It’s not a reflection of which is the most important genre for me. I’m open to and have favourites in all. I tend to mix my reading and have several books on the go, but sometimes I find that I need to concentrate on one book just to see it through and do it some justice.

So, let’s start with the following:

General/literary fiction

Donna Tartt (A Secret History)
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
Tahmima Anam (A Golden Age)
Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, Patron Saint of Liars)
Michelle de Kretser (The Hamilton Case)
Sarah Waters (The Night Watch, The Little Stranger)
Romesh Gunasekara (The Match)
Shyam Selvadurai (Funny Boy, Cinnamon Gardens)
Douglas Coupland (Generation X)
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
Kaori Ekuni (Twinkle Twinkle, Calmi Cuori Appassionata – Red (in Japanese only))
Agota Kristof (The Notebook; The Proof; The Third Lie – Three Novels)
Michael Ondaatje (Running in the Family, The English Patient, Anil’s Ghost)

You will notice that I have quite a few Sri Lankan writers in the mix: Michelle de Kretser, Romesh Gunasekara and Shyam Selvadurai. Everytime I go back to Sri Lanka, I always feel a need to read about the country, to immerse myself in the culture and history of the place. And I also stock up on a lot of books there that aren’t available abroad. Perera Hussein Publishing House publishes Sri Lankan authors writing in English and their blog can be found here.

My favourite book of all time is Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I first read it as I was revising for my first year undergrad exams. Even though my mind was busy trying to grasp the intricacies of maths and physics, Tartt’s novel gripped me from the start and I spent every moment I could away from my studies burrowed in her book. I haven’t read it in a while so I might give it a go when the mood takes me. Her second book The Little Friend was much anticipated but didn’t have as big an impact and took me a while to get into. There is something about her writing that invokes a feeling within me that I cannot find anywhere else. I finished it still believing she is a great writer even though I didn’t love it as much as The Secret History, and I can’t wait for her next book.

Donna Tartt is the kind of writer I’d like to be. Her books have such weight to them, while still pulling you in and keeping you turning those pages. Wanting to write the way she does is one of the reasons I’m just now starting to undertake writing a novel – I have my doubts that such a feat is a possibility for me, hence my hesitation to begin. Self-confidence issues, much?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/oct/19/fiction.features

I had mentioned in a previous post that I really wanted to read a book set in a grand stately home whilst I myself stayed in the same setting. Now my intention was to read the book, which was Lucie Whitehouse’s debut novel ‘The House At Midnight’, while I was there but being busy took over and so its taken me a fair while to actually sit down and read it. In fact actually until Thursday I was only about 25 pages in, which then having book group meant it was held off an evening. Last night I finally got myself all curled up on the sofa and before I knew it five hours had gone by and the book was finished.

‘The House At Midnight’ is a tale set in Stoneborough Manor, in deepest Oxfordshire. In these grand surroundings a group of friends meet after Lucas Heathfield inherits the property from his uncle Patrick. Lucas’ grand scheme is to use this house as a weekend retreat for all his university friends to escape from the hustle and bustle of their city lives now most of them are in London. However within days of their first stay at the Manor things start to change between them.

Lucas declares his love for his best friend Joanna (who is also our narrator of the novel) something the group of friends has been expecting for years. There are the old sayings though that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’ and that ‘friendships shouldn’t become relationships’ and as the lines, not only between Joanna and Lucas but within the rest of the group too, blur between friendship and more things becoming increasingly more complex and darker. Throughout the year that follows desire mounts, sexuality flows and a whole mix of emotions arise all under the confines of a Manor which slowly but surely seems to be having a strange effect on Lucas who becomes more and more obsessed about his past and the dark secrets that lie in it and also the secrets that lie in all of his friends lives.

I admit I was expecting from the cover that this would be an epic chilling, thrilling ghost story. It’s not. What it is in fact is a domestic drama about a group of people as they reach their thirties and how emotions, desire and greed can push people together and pull them apart shattering relationships and friendships as they go. In many ways it reminded me of a British middle-class homage to Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’, I could also see shades of Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’ in terms of the relationships between the younger generations in that novel.

I was really impressed with Lucie Whitehouse’s debut, and though I ended up reading something quite different from what I thought I was getting, I honestly couldn’t put it down. Even though this wasn’t a ghost story it’s incredibly gripping and has one heck of a twist in its tail for you. Through out the book you’re constantly wondering where the next twist and drama is going to come from. Though it isn’t technically a thriller either the way that Whitehouse writes she doesn’t need to leave a cliff hanger at every chapter ending to make you want to read the end. I found this an immensely enjoyable read and look forward to whatever Lucie writes next, highly recommended.

And speaking of houses at midnight, I will be shifting between houses at midnight tonight I am moving house this weekend! It’s all been quite sudden and I have been keeping it close to my chest as didn’t want to jinx it. I love the new place, its great and its also HUGE… all the more room for more books!!!

Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden from Fight Club, arguably one of the greatest literary characters of recent times

Something ain’t right with my novel.

The big bones are in place: the main characters, the plot lines, even the climax and denouement. Seen from a distance, it certainly looks like a novel. But up close, you can see that it’s just a simulacrum of one; it’s canvas doped over a frame, like a dummy aircraft to fool the high-flying enemy. A book prematurely abridged.

A good start, I hope: now the simple process of filling in…

Ah:  here’s the rub. It’s this close-up work, the real flesh of the story that refuses generaisations and synecdoche that I’m having trouble with. There are scraps of the real stuff, passages and pages I adore, but I am having trouble joining them into a consistent and cogent narrative.  It’s not quite firing, quickening, whatever metaphor takes your fancy to describe that mojo quality that is life.

It’s tricky. This writing, in fact, is positively hard. Those that have actually achieved this act of sustained imagination (or perhaps more accurately, these millions of small acts of imagination) ascend higher in my estimation every day.

The main problem lies with the characters.  It’s not about them yet: it’s still about events, and the characters just happen to be the vessels through which interesting happenings happen. The tension between plot and character is of course fundamental to all stories. But I want both to be vibrating, pulsating, symbiotes feeding and thriving off the other.

And the core reason for this problem? I simply don’t know my characters well enough. Even the main characters have not got the depth of history, of complexity, that makes me believe they’re real. I am often at a loss as to what a character will do in a situation, how they will speak, react, move about. I can’t hear them. Their voices are muted.

Or, if the problem is not a lack of biography, it is they have too many, all equally tempting and interesting, all antipathetic to one another.  Choosing a particular path for a character involves destruction as well as creation, the slicing away of a host of possible past and futures. Of all the shiny scraps of the world that I have collected- the interesting stories and happenings squirreled away in notebooks- only a small proportion will ever be realised in a character. Try to get too many in, and a character becomes a shapeless hold-all.

So sit your characters down and interrogate them.  Ask them fifty questions. Start off with the major biographical details: name, sex, age etc. But then range on, to favourite foods, pastimes, memories, to their hopes and fears. Concoct strange questions and situations, and see how they react. Examine their webs of relatives, friends and enemies. How do they sit within these networks? Are they popular or disliked? Powerful or downtrodden?

Physical appearance is essential. What do they look like exactly? Sketch them. Find photos that could be them.  How do they walk, and sit and laugh? What do they sound like when they talk to you? Hopefully when they answer your questions, they’ll begin speaking in their own voice, complete with their quirks of accent and idiom.

Running parallel with getting to better know our peeps, we have to make sure they are worth knowing.

A bad story, in a film, play or book, invariably lacks strong characters.  Forget the setting, the special FX or bodycount. It’s how alive the characters are, how much the audience can empathise with them (not always, please note, sympathise). We’ve got three million years of DNA programming forcing us to want to pay attention to what people are about. Even if cinema audiences bumble on about wanting to see explosions and full frontal nudity, what they would really like is that but with great characters.

So what makes a great character? A trawl through my own fiction reading, and various handbooks on writing, offers some consensus.

Falstaff, one of the great Shakespeare characters

• Characters should be vibrant. They push against life. Something is wrong in their lives and they set out to change it, whether an external event forced upon them or an internal problem revealed through self-examination.
• Like real people they should be full of contrasting, even contradictory emotions.  Surprise the reader with how a character acts and reacts. Complex people are interesting people. External conflict often reveals the internal conflicts, the mental fault lines along which a character splits.  The character is forced to make choices.
• A mix of characters brings realism and contrast. They shouldn’t be interchangeable with one another: the “Bad Guy No.4” in the credits. Humour and sadness ,  for example, whether expressed by a single person, or in a group, become sharper when next to each other.  A wacky character can act as a foil for the more realistic. Or a character can be contrasted against the environment; the city boys in the country; the airhead in a high-powered job.
• They are often good at what they do, whether it be cutting wood or being a lawyer. Even if they are bad at something, then they are the best at being the worst.

Of course, these guidelines are by no means definitive or binding. Not all these characteristics need to be included in each of your creations. But I think they certainly provide some direction.

With the details set down in black and white, with ambiguity taken away, the characters start to have to make decisions for themselves.  These concrete details are the foundations on which intricate structures can suddenly be built. New, more subtle plot suddenly presents itself.  Cards can be placed on these foundations- and then, as time goes on these lower layers seem to harden and fuse themselves, capable to sustaining structures upon them too, all the while developing in unexpected ways.

In the light of this discussion, it is perhaps telling that my two favourite stories of the moment, Anna Karenina (read the full text here), and the various series of The Wire (The Wire dedicated Guardian Blog), use their respective equivalents of the omnipresent, omnipotent narrator to peel back the inner lives of their characters.  With the same unblinking eye, we see the conflicting, and often contradictory, emotions in all parties. All are understandable as human: all suddenly become rational beings, no longer easily summed up and dismissed by race, wealth, gender or sexuality. The reader is forced to confront the tragedy or blessing of chance: that could have been me.

Vividly imagined, vital characters can help us be better people.  To crawl, waltz, crash out of the hot confines of one’s head, and into another’s: to forget one’s body and become someone else, if only for a moment, and then to return, slightly changed, more sensitive and subtle, is magic and art itself.

Just for your information and my fun, here are my top five characters:

1. Captain Yossarian (Catch 22 by Joseph Heller)
2. Sydney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens) (Full text)
3. Harriet Dufresnes (The Little Friend by Donna Tartt)
4. William Brown (Just William by Richmal Crompton)
5. Falstaff (Henry IV Pts. I&II, The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare) (Full texts)

Watch Captain Yossarian collect a medal in the nude below:

Discussion:
Have you been finding Richard’s posts useful? What are you going to take away from this instalment? If you’re doing some writing how have you found the obstacle of fleshing out your characters? Comments and debate always welcome below.

Words: Richard Walsh

So today, amid no furniture, I watched the re-broadcast of Lucia di Lammermoor from the Met in HD series.  I think the Met in HD is a great idea still getting its legs.  This production was worlds better than the Boheme I saw with Gheorghiu and Vargas last year, but when we saw it in theatres my boyfriend and I were the only people with all of their original teeth.

What started as a few Tweets in reaction to seeing this production on the small screen and on our home turf turned into a full blown Live Tweet of the performance–a concept many opera, dance, and orchestral companies are considering implementing into their concert series.  This reminds me of Vancouver Opera’s recent Blogger Night at the Opera, allowing a live-feed but with less pressure to write longer posts.  In fact, the bite-sized comments, facts, thoughts, questions, praises, and critiques are the perfect medium to allow a continual flow during the performance without causing Tweeps to get too caught up in what to say.  Most of these tweets took me all of five seconds to hammer out.  More blog platforms (including WordPress, on which this blog is hosted) are also offering templates that allow for these Bridget Jones-like entries, which could be kept for posterity on the company website (and not clog up a ton of Twitter/Facebook feeds, which is exactly what I inflicted on my poor, unsuspecting friends and colleagues).

But what really would have been fun is to have gone head-to-head, tweet-to-tweet with a Met staffer who had worked on the piece, offering two sides of the coin.

The impressions from my side are below (read from the bottom up)…

• And we’re at curtain, concluding my live Tweeting of the Lucia broadcast. Which, if nothing else, clogged up everyone’s feeds quite nicely.
• I got nothing new to say for Tu Che a Dio; except that in the Who’s Afraid of Opera version, they do it first. (Thanks, Mom)
• These mourners totally remind me of Eleanor Rigby.
• Technically, it’s good. But Beczala is losing me in the final inning pathos-wise. Maybe Rolando > Piotr? http://tiny.cc/SVphO
• Finally, a high note!
• Sorry, Anna. You can never, ever top Dessay’s scream (@ 7:52 in this clip): http://tiny.cc/EGrYY
• Revisiting the sexual tension between Lucia & Enrico by having her imagine him as Edgardo. Love these little intricacies.
• Anthony, this one’s for you: Where’s the high E?
• But kind of amazing how I didn’t pick up on the missed notes in the mad scene the first time around.
• Seeing the mad scene again is making me think this isn’t Anna’s role. Or it isn’t her time for the role. But she’s such. A. Good. Actress.
• (Spoiler alert): With all this teetering on suicide from Lucia and Edgardo, why does L’s ghost need to help E shove the knife in @ the end?
• You could save that set for Rusalka and do a killer “Song to the Moon.”
• Raimondo totally knows that all hell is about to break loose. And then enter Lucia.
• Can someone explain the red dress to white dress switch? Were they doing an Asian wedding in 19th Century Scotland?
• There’s barely anything on the set but two amazing singers. Yes, that’s really all you need.
• Dear Mariusz Kwiecien (Part II): You can run me through with your conquering sword any time
• I’m tempted to make a Polish joke, but Beczala and Kwiecien going at it in the oft-cut scene is just too damn good.
• And, as always, thanks to Viewers Like You. I think that was one of my first sentences as a kid.
• And now a word from our sponsors: Thanks, Toll Brothers! Rock on Irene Diamond Fund! Go NEA! Love Vivian Milstein! Hats off to CPB!
• G-d, between that top note and the scrim that comes down at the end I could live in the Act 2 finale.
• I love this one chorus member who knows, because he’s behind Netrebs, he’ll probably be on camera and works it like he’s on ANTM.
• I’m so picky about Enrico’s “Rispondi,” and Beczala knocks it out of the park. (Wish the Yankees could do the same…)
• Oh, shut up, R, you totally want them to kill one another. That “lives by the sword” bit is irony at its finest.
• Still can’t decide how I feel about the sextet staging. But boy is it clever. Especially when Lucia PTFO’s.
• Enrico is such a shyster.
• Is the Raim./Luc. duet really necessary? I get that it adds to R’s profile as the orchestrator of the tragedy, but it’s not working for me.
• Aaaaand now Netrebs is singing from the floor. I forgot about this part–the gift that keeps on giving! (Seriously)
• This productions remains one of the best explorations of the character of Enrico. Wish they had given Raimondo the prominence he’s due.
• This Lucia/Enrico relationship borders on incestuous at times in that sort of Donna Tartt/”The Secret History” kind of way.
• Geez, some of these camera angles just scream “bad indie film.” And don’t do Netrebs and her baby weight any favors.
• Ha! I never noticed that ghostface killa makes an appearance in the background of the Act II opening as well.
• Oh, are we not doing intermission chats? Was that only if I paid $25 for a movie ticket and sat in a room full of septuagenarians?
• Still, I love me a full-throated tenor.
• Piotr Beczala > Rolando Villazon (maybe), but needs more pathos in the voice. What was that “Ah, Lucia” about?
• I guess I’m live-Tweeting this Lucia-cast (after seeing it in HD in Feb.): Anna Netrebko sees dead people.
• Dear Mariusz Kwiecien: I can’t decide on what I love more; your name or your sustained note at the end of Act I Scene i.
• My apartment may be nearly empty, but at least I have Lucia on PBS to fill the void.

Yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble with a friend of mine. My mission? To pick up a couple books for my upcoming vacation.

Thanks to my uber- supportive reader Mom, who is awesome enough to buy me a copy of all the books her book club reads, I already had several: “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt, “Blessings” by Anna Quindlen, “The Almost Moon,” by Alice Sebold (which I cannot WAIT to sink my teeth into, having read both “Lucky” and “The Lovely Bones” several years back), “Ghost Story,” by Peter Straub, and finally, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” by Steve Harvey. Yes, comedian Steve Harvey. I’ve got to say, I’m kind of looking forward to this one.

But then I walked into B&N, stopped dead in my tracks, and (depending on how you want to picture me) may or may not have shrieked a little while jumping up and down giddily. Because, dear readers, JODI PICOULT HAS A NEW BOOK OUT!!!!

I should explain. Probably about 5 years ago now, I picked up “My Sister’s Keeper,” one of Picoult’s fabulous novels, in an airport. I’m pretty sure I had it finished by the time I arrived at my final destination that day. (This was probably a combination of the excellent book and also of my flights being predictably delayed and cancelled, a la “Dear American Airlines,” by Jonathan Miles, who writes a story in the form of a letter being written by a man whose flights have done just that and caused him to miss the culminating event of his life after years of self-exploration to arrive at that point…there’s your mini-review for that one, it’s probably not going to get its own post).

At any rate. “My Sister’s Keeper.” Totally and completely hooked. Since then I’ve acquired the entire rest of her collection, the latest three in hardback because I simply couldn’t wait for them to be more affordable and, let’s face it, I scrap all book-buying rules for Jodi

So yesterday found me giddily purchasing “Handle With Care.” I’m only 193 pages into it, but I’m pretty confident that my review after I’m done will continue to be along the lines of where it is now, which is, “ohmygod, how does she do this?!”

The book is excellent. As with her other novels, this one explores an incredibly complex scenario from the viewpoint of multiple people- all with a unique, and dare-I-say completely acceptable perspective on the situation. Suffice it to say that these viewpoints don’t always line up, leading the reader to have to discover their own feelings on the situation.

(The rest is NOT a spoiler, since you could learn this reading the book jacket, but if you truly want to know NOTHING about the book before buying it, don’t read on and I’ll see you in my next post!)

“Handle with Care” centers around a child with osteogenesis imperfecta, where bones break easily and a sneeze could result in a cast. (This is an extremely non-medical and simplified explanation; Picoult does an amazing job of providing you the genetic information behind this disease and the statistics on the patients  it affects each year). The question posed of the parents, as they search for the answer to whether or not to sue their physician (who happens to be Mom’s best friend) for medical malpractice, is: Even though you love her, would it be better if she had never been born?

I’m about 1/3 of the way through but with a busy day ahead of me, so look for the review sometime next week. In the meantime, let me know your thoughts about any of the books on my vacation reading list! I also picked up Lee Child’s “Killing Floor”- a Jack Reacher novel, another series I’m a big fan of. Look for future blog posts on Child’s work. Finally, I grabbed “Agnes and the Hitman,” by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, off the bargain bin shelf. I have to confess I didn’t even read the back, but the title alone was worth the $5.98 for a fun beach read.

Happy reading!

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

It’s a great first line. How can you bear not to read further? A few sentences down comes “We hadn’t intended to hide the body where it couldn’t be found.” I’m hooked.

But I’d forgotten that this book is not just compelling, it’s truly sinister. I’d been reminded of it by Tana French’s The Likeness which also features a clannish group of brilliant students who connive at the death of one of their number.  French’s characters, though, have a lot more fun, perhaps because her book has more limited aspirations. It’s as if she can afford to let them play around more because she doesn’t have to use them to make a point.

Tartt’s structure works very well.  I quoted above from the prologue. Then she backs up, gets the narrator (a middle-class Californian: useful to have an outsider to observe the folkways of a precious lower-Vermont liberal arts college) to Hampden College and inserts him into the advanced Greek class where he meets the protagonists. Bunny, the least clever, most ordinary of them, doesn’t die until page 269 though an anonymous Vermonter meets his death in a bacchanal on page 163.  It’s chilling how little any of them cares about the farmer. Bunny, however, becomes not just unattractive but downright menacing so he must also be removed.

What Tartt does brilliantly is lure you into the mental state of these five extremely strange characters. Kids, really, college students: and I suppose their indifference to anyone outside their clique is age-appropriate. Or would be, watered down.  But this is high-grade, wanton disregard. Tartt focuses on the reflexive snobbery that keeps these characters linked, a self-anointed aristocracy of intelligence and taste that is fed by their professor, a truly nasty piece of work.  Face it, if you belong to a group that regularly drops into ancient Greek to preserve secrets from the hoi polloi, your morals may just crumble around the edges.

The writing’s wonderful. Could be irritating if you don’t enjoy florid erudition, but a lot of it is really witty. For instance: in the lengthy denouement (half of the book, really, when everything comes literally unraveled) a drug bust at the college prompts massive destruction of contraband.  “Théophile Gautier, writing about the effects of Vigny’s Chatterton on the youth of Paris, said that in the nineteenth-century night one could practically hear the crack of the solitary pistols: here, now, in Hampden, the night was alive with the flushing of toilets. ” Dark but funny.

Het begon allemaal lang geleden met Anthony Horowitz (begint het niet bij zowat de helft van de pubers met hem?), waarna het nooit meer goed kwam; boeken zijn nu eenmaal verslavend.

En zo gebeurde het dat ik hele bibliotheken las, maar op mijn boekenplank was tot voor kort maar weinig meer dan enkele plukjes stof te vinden. Maar toen, was het een zonnige zomerdag of een witte winternacht, geen idee, maar toen ging plots de “cd-winkel-om-de-hoek” het hoekje om, of anders gezegd failliet. In plaats van elke dag even wat cd’tjes te bekijken, ging ik bij wijze van alternatief elke dag wat boeken bekijken.

De eerste die over de toonbank gingen waren de Donkere-Toren-boeken van Stephen King (iets meer dan 3000 pagina’s in totaliteit, die ik al meer dan eens heb verslonden), daarna wist ik even niet welke boeken ik nog moest aanschaffen. Tot ik iets meer dan een week geleden De Verborgen Geschiedenis van Donna Tartt zag liggen…

Donna Tartt op de boekenplank onder de noemer “Uitgelezen en moest ik tijd hebben, ik begon van voorafaan opnieuw!”

Iemand boeken gelezen die hij/zij meteen onder diezelfde noemer zou willen plaatsen?

I’m turning in early tonight because I can’t wait to get back to The Little Friend.

I’ve been wanting to read this since it was published years ago, and Lyta pushed a copy to the top of my pile New Year’s (when she, Jaffner and I had a little circular book swap of sorts). And she’s right. It’s way better than Donna Tartt’s first novel.

When I read The Secret History I was hating myself because it wasn’t that dense a book, but I just could not put it down. I think I hid out in the bathtub for most of a weekend devouring it. And feeling guilty for not only reading when I could’ve been parenting, but reading trash.

This one isn’t so guilty.  It nails the whole small southern town thing, black and white, white trash and deacons, church politics, old houses and Southerners who romanticize their family’s lost affluence — and create their own, oral, versions of family history. Its community of women is comfortable, compelling and somehow very familiar to me (imagine that). It’s narrated by 12-year-old Harriet, but besides her best friend Dill character (Hely in this manifestation) all the men and boys are dead or absent. And the women don’t mind one bit.

It’s very dark, haunted by murder and injustice, but there are some of the most amazing child’s-eye views. Carpets and toy soldiers. Bent floor nails. Heatstroke. Boredom as palpable as cotton. Lost innocence at the recognition that white folks you admire don’t apply the Golden Rule to the black folks in their lives. 

So where’s the whole snake thing going? no women, but a bunch of rednecks with venomous snakes? I’m not even a third of the way through, so I’m headed to bed to find out now.

Yesterday The Guardian advertised a series they would be starting today; “1000 novels everyone must read”. I buy The Guardian daily and so I thought that when I got it today there might, at least, be a little bit of humour in the introduction to this series. Something along the lines of “just kidding.”

A while back the same paper did a “1000 films to see before you die.” Ok, if the trend has to be to list eveything, and then to apply some random number to that list, a 1,000 films is possibly doable. And at least in this instance The Guardian didn’t have the cheek to tell me I must see them. You’re my daily paper, not some Dickensian frightmaster (whatever that is or whoever he may be…  Piddlewitch Poddlewitch… I don’t know. Like I’ve read the books! But you may get the idea).

One thousand films, at let’s say an average of two hours a film. That’s… (quick bit of maths) 2000 hours. (Insert your own pause here while I do the longer bit of maths)… Hmm, just realised that the “two hours times 1,000″ thing doesn’t really help. Let’s go for this approach. I do my best to watch all the films this daft paper recommends. So, given that I have a vague sort of a life, and also I want to find time for all the new films coming out, I try and watch two of them a week. I think that shows a fair dedication to a list a few people have cobbled together to try and sell more papers. This means I will be watching The Guardian’s list of films for the next TEN YEARS! (Sorry about those capitals. I rarely would resort to this sort of visual emphasis, but come on now… TEN YEARS!!!)

Right, that’s the films dealt with. Now onto the books. You may be able to see where this is going.

Ok, I don’t get a choice with the books. There’s no should, there’s no “you might like”. There’s just must. And not just me. Everyone! The Guardian (oh, how much I’m starting to hate them right now) says these are the 1,000 novels EVERYONE MUST READ!!! (There I go again, but I’m feeling a little Hulkish at the moment).

Ok, here we go. I don’t know how long it takes you to read a novel, but it can take me quite a while. The Secret History by Donna Tartt took me ten years to read. Ok, I took some time off, and I read some books inbetween, but I started it when it first came out in paperback in the early 90’s and I finished it in 2003. This book crossed centuries with me. Now I don’t feel too bad about this. I really enjoyed the book, and it took Donna Tartt another ten years to get around to a second book, The Little Friend. So, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or something like that.

If I read a book quickly it might take me about a month or so. Depending on the number of pages of course. I recently read Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. This is a long book, 650 pages or so. I loved it and have since been tracking down other Murakami books. It took me about six weeks to read.

Now the maths here is a bit difficult for me to work out. Kafka on the Shore and The Secret History are both long books. One took me six weeks and another, ten years. So, I guess, to get an average, we need to go “ten years add six weeks is ten years and six weeks, divided by two is… five years and three weeks.”

Now on to the 1000 books I must read. They won’t all be long, so let’s assume 500 of them are half the size of The Secret History/Kafka on the Shore. Those ones will take me just over two and a half years. So… two and a half years times 500 equals 1250 years. Five years and three weeks times 500 equals (approximately) 2530 years. At my rate, to read all thes books The Guardian insists I read, it would take me 3780 years.

And, for those quick readers who read a book a week, it will take you 20 years. That gives you two weeks off a year. It’s a bit like work isn’t it.

Finally, let’s take an average sort of reader. You get by with books, but you also have plays and music and cinema and friends and kids and parents and relatives and sports and work in your life. Maybe more things. But you do your best and you manage a book a month. So, that’s the next 80+ years sorted then.

Oh, fuck off Guardian.

This following is straight from Wikipedia: “The Secret History, the first novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. A 75,000 print order was made for the first edition (as opposed to the usual 10,000 order for a debut novel), and the book became a bestseller.

“Set in New England, The Secret History tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics students at a small, elite Vermont college, similar in many respects to Bennington College (in Bennington, Vermont) where Tartt was a student from 1982 to 1986. Tartt’s tale has certain parallels with the unsolved case of Bennington art student Paula Jean Welden who vanished while hiking near the college in 1946.

“One of the six students is the story’s narrator, Richard Papen, who reflects, years later, on the situation that led to a murder within the group, implying such at the outset but otherwise revealing events sequentially. In the opening chapter, as the reader is introduced to Papen, the death of student Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran is revealed, although few details are given initially. The novel undertakes to explore the circumstances and lasting effects of his murder on an academically and socially isolated group of students attending Hampden College in Vermont.

“The impact on the students is ultimately destructive, and the potential promise of many young lives is lost to circumstance. It mirrors, in many ways, the notion of a Greek tragedy with fate playing a large part in dictating the very circumstances that lead to an escalation of already fermenting issues.”

This book is part Lord of the Flies, part Greek tragedy, part Talented Mr. Ripley. My favorite review by Michiko Kakutani  of The New York Times, said ”In The Secret History, Ms. Tartt managed to make… melodramatic and bizarre events (involving Dionysian rites and intimations of satanic power) seem entirely plausible.”

I love reading. I studied English Literature at university, was inspired by few of the lectures, found many of the tutorials tedious as only the same smug souls spoke, but I enjoyed reading at the required quick, thorough pace, gaining knowledge about literary periods and authors that I have mostly forgotten now, as is the way. Some people say that studying one’s passion is tantamount to smothering it, so I am relieved that I still hold the overwhelming excitement when considering the very amount of wonderful and creative books that I hope to read before I tonk it very dear to me.

It is the most natural and inevitable part of the reading process for individuals to develop opinions about the text – plot, characters, narrative, emotions derived from a personal involvement with the story -  and as long as they can back it up with evidence, literal or intuitive, about the book, they should be entitled to value their ideas, whether or not they are deemed correct by the lofty powers that be, or indeed by the author. Ownership of a text is a key part of the reading experience. For this reason I dislike comments about right or wrong interpretations of books, so for the record I do not seek to enforce my opinions onto anyone, but instead I welcome opposing views because they force me to consider my ideas.

I have kept a diary – a notebook in which I document thoughts, fears and events which I believe to be important to my life at the time – since I was 13, and recently I list all of the books that I aim to read in a year at the back of it. Once I’ve read a book I can tick or cross it off with a sense of satisfaction. I also list books I aim to acquire or read in the near future, titles I remember hearing about when I studied English or books that my friends have recommended in passing.

With a new year comes a new list, but first let’s reflect on the books I read in 2008 – in chronological order, no less.

Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass – I had to re-read it after watching the film at the annual family festive cinema trip and feeling as though vital chunks of text and characterisation had been omitted.

Bret Easton Ellis: The Rules of Attraction – Lunar Park was a big favourite of mine in 2007, as was Less Than Zero, though I am still unsure as to the effect of combining empty, graphic sex scenes with pop culture references. His characters are no more than unlikeable vessels, but I suppose that’s the point. Whatever the reason I find his books strangely compelling, as though Ellis is consciously playing and preying on everyone’s innate fascination of the morbid.

Alex Kapranos: Sound Bites – Not only do I have a strange crush on the angular cheekbones and dance moves of Fran Ferdinand’s main man, but as part of my research for a Clash magazine article on The Second Best Scottish Band After Belle & Sebastian (feel free to dispute that), I read this compilation of his food reviews that he used to submit on a weekly basis to Guardian’s G2 supplement. It was a very enjoyable read, all the more so because the bitesize portions were easily digestible during the laughably short 3 minute train journey from Cardiff Queen Street to the Bay.

James Frey: My Friend Leonard – A disappointing follow-up to the much talked about A Million Little Pieces. Disregarding the fact he claimed it was based on truth when it wasn’t, this sequel adds no further depth to the remaining characters, in fact it trivialises them. If you’re going to be sensationalist, you could do a whole lot better than this supposed twist about mafia boss Leonard. I could hear a faint ‘ker-ching’ in my ears as I finished the book, aware that Frey will have been able to buy himself a lovely new house (or drug habit) with the payment received from this let-down.

Donna Tartt: The Secret History – So much praise has been lavished on this book yet with that in mind I was still overwhelmingly impressed by the quality of the writing and plot. Recently I read a Guardian review likening teen vampire romance ‘Twilight’ to this book and I am somewhat baffled by such a benile comparison. Still, I can’t wait to read My Little Friend this year. Go Donna!

William Goldman: The Princess Bride – I was pretty much laughed out of a wedding when I said to a guest next to me at the table ‘Wow! I’ve read two amazing books in succession! The Secret History and The Princess Bride!’ I received a scornful ‘Where have you been the last ten years?’ because it turns out I’m not the only one to shower it with praise. Still, I don’t think it hurts to agree with the critics and the masses when a book is as delightful, fun, joyous and downright entertaining as this. If I wielded any power I would make it mandatory to read The Princess Bride. I’m getting so fired up typing this now that I expect I will dedicate a full post to it in the near future.

Alasdair Gray: The History Maker – I asked my sister for Lanark for a Christmas present in 2007 and due to a slight failure on her or a bookseller’s part, I received this instead. As a result I read it in a somewhat curmudgeonly fashion, as though I begrudged the very text itself. What a twat I am. This lesser-known book of Gray’s is an ambitious, whimsical yet somehow believable tale of a parallel world. To be honest, I can’t really remember the plot, but rather the dream-like images derived from reading it. It’s pretty short and ‘readable’ so I’d definitely recommend taking an afternoon to settle in a comfy chair with a fresh brew and enjoy this story.

Joshua Ferris: Then We Came to an End – Perfect reading while you await your fate at work. With life imitating art, we came to an end too.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night – Reading this has made me want to re-read The Great Gatsby. There is a genuine ache throughout this book about the hurt that people can cause to each other.

Graham Greene: Brighton Rock – *Spoiler alert!* What an ending. The image of the pathetic, trusting girl listening back to her dead husband’s violent rage, directed at her, is truly harrowing.

Chuck Palahniuk: Diary – Hmmmm. In a slight bastardisation of Paul Weller’s schmaltz-fest song, this did absolutely nothing to me. Though, similar to my feelings for Bret Easton Ellis, something about Palahniuk intrigues me, so I’ve added another of his books to my 2009 reading list.

Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook - And so begins another spate of great books relished in succession. I love the format of this book, with the various distinctly-themed notebooks within one overriding text. A fascinating exploration of the female self, communism and society, one which I would like to re-visit as I’m sure there’s a lot I didn’t pick up on at the first read.

John Fowles: The Magus – More on this at a later date. All I can say is WOW.

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Young Oscar is a delightful narrator, and this book has the right balance of giggle-out-loud moments combined with deep sadness. The latter, to me, was not portrayed directly through the loss of his father, but the treatment of Oscar at school, in particular the graphic daydream about beating up his bully when playing Yorick in the production of Hamlet. Easier to read than the author’s debut, Everything is Illuminated, but less fulfilling, especially regarding the depth and reliability of the narrative.

Bret Easton Ellis: Glamorama – See above for my overall Ellis views, but this is my second favourite of his books after Lunar Park. I love the jerky twists that the plot takes. Apparently a film’s been in the pipeline for a while, with the scriptwriter of The Rules of Attraction having bought film rights, but so far nothing seems concrete, which doesn’t surprise me as it would be so easy to make this a one-dimensional story for the screen, instead of focusing on the unpredictable, ‘who the hell is controlling all of this’ elements.

Check out http://www.cinematical.com/2005/10/03/bret-easton-ellis-on-glamorama-movie/

The claimed cast list is interesting too, with the likes of Shannen Doherty and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Shannyn Sossamon reprising the role of Lauren from Rules of Attraction, which is effectivly the prequel to Glamorama. Remembering this, I realise that I am a sucker for an author or director who plays around with his characters, re-introducing them unexpectedly – Patrick Bateman, I’m looking at you (but please don’t look at me or fist me or anything).

See full proposed list here:  http://glamorama.iespana.es/crew.html

P.G. Wodehouse: The Inimitable Jeeves - My friend gave me a Jeeves and Wooster book a few years ago, which I found such quality light entertainment that I bought this when I found it in a charity shop. Having spoken to other friends I’ve discovered how popular Wodehouse still is, especially among twenty-something blokes. I look forward to reading more of his works, particularly the adventures of Psmith.

Andy Stanton: You’re A Bad Man, Mr Gum! – I used to be Programme Controller of children’s digital radio station FUN radio, recently re-branded Fun Kids. When I returned as a freelance consultant to work on the re-brand of the station I spoke to Egmont publisher’s publicity department about their key books. My favourite characters in their repertoire are Charlie Bone, hero of Jenny Nimmo’s Harry-Potter-but-more-mystical-than-magical series, and Mr Gum. We arranged an interesting contra-deal which involved Andy Stanton voicing comedy news bulletins about Lamonic Bibber, Mr Gum’s home town.

Andy Stanton won the 2008 Roald Dahl funny prize and rightly so because he has that hard to achieve power to appeal to both parents and children. many people call it the ‘Shrek factor’ but I won’t on this occasion because Stanton is ten times funnier than those films about the pseudo Scottish ogre. I have never before had to walk out of a studio during recording due to laughing too much, as Andy’s scripts, combined with his deadpan news delivery, were hilarious. Reading his Mr Gum books will have a similar effect, and I would heartily recommend you purchase one of the books and keep it by your bed or on your person in case of sudden sadness. After a couple of pages you’ll be fizzy with giddiness.

Vladimir Nabokov: Collected Stories – All 650 pages of them. Tough going at times but ultimately a rewarding experience. A full post’s worth of thoughts about that one are required methinks.

I also got about halfway through William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch but left the book on a plane.

Today I finished reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.  The novel takes place in Vermont and follows the narrator, Richard Papen, who comes from a lower-class family and a loveless California home to the “hermetic, overheated atmosphere” of Hampden College, where he is accepted into a clique of five socially sophisticated students who study Classics with an idiosyncratic, morally fraudulent professor.  The friends are a little strange, and finally reveal to Richard that they accidentally killed a man during a bacchanalian frenzy (some sort of ancient Greek ritual); when one of their number seems ready to spill the secret, the group–now including Richard–must kill him, too.  The book takes several unexpected psychological veers off course.  This is unexpected, defintiely NOT boring and always keeps the reader guessing as to what will happen next.

This was an excellent book and I would definitley recommend it to others.  The book is about 572 pages and I was able to read the whole thing in less than 3 days.  I think that is a testiment to the talent of the writer and the rapture that the story holds.  I encourage everyone who is looking for a really GREAT read to go out and pick up a copy.  Ciao!