This post is about books. Scary books, controversial books, challenging books, and wonderful books.
Sorry but it got quite long. I suggest a coffee, a chocolate biscuit and a seat. And look, you're not allowed to jump to the picture at the end (which isn't really there), see what I bought and then tootle off. NOT allowed!
The day started off badly, running on a faulty autopilot. Bookshops are in 'big town' and trips to 'big town' involve a car journey. After thirty minutes of driving daydreams, something seemed quite wrong with the view out of the window. It was ... it was ... I was heading towards the wrong 'big town'!?! Sometimes, just sometimes I really don't like my peanut sized brain! Quickly did a U-turn, feeling quite guilty for this unnecessary little addition to global warming, all my combusted fumes helping to pollute the sky.
The sky in return, wasn't at all happy. It turned grey, then black, then it rained, a torrential rain that slows traffic to a crawl. But nothing was going to spoil my book day! I'd brought a cagoule for my rucksack (it's true, I even took a pic to prove it).
So although my trainers were soaked after a few minutes and rain was dripping into my eyes, rucksack and precious tokens were snug and dry. I had gift tokens worth £22 that would only work in W.H.Smith and a £10 book token to be spent anywhere. With nine books on my list this meant £3.55 per title, or some fierce choices or even scarier, having to spend actual cash! Cash, you see, is in short supply right now.
There was one priority, one book that I really wanted! William Horwood wrote a duology called "The Wolves of Time". Now it's not about people (actually the final volume is and it's not as good), it's about wolves but look, these wolves have characters that most wobbly humans would die for. The story is a journey, and it's about courage, trust and love, murder, betrayal and hope. I bought this five or six years ago, and it's been lovingly and regularly re-read since.
So, after reading the Goldfish's excellent review of a book called "Skallagrigg" by the same Author, I was fascinated to see what a versatile and courageous writer he seems to be. There's a catch though - you can't buy Skallagrigg on Amazon unless you pay for a rare and ridiculously expensive used version.
This didn't bode well - but - today was my special book day and having spent time and effort researching, I decided to be optimistic. The shelves in Seriously Big Bookshop One, were ordered by genre and seeing as I didn't know whether the titles on my list were crime thrillers, horror stories, fantasies or general fiction, it seemed sensible to ask an assistant.
" 'Skallagrigg' by William Horwood, do you stock this?" After a minute spent trying to spell it for him, he said, "I'll have to go look on the computer, it'll be about 5 or 10 minutes", and off he went. Meanwhile I started looking for Dean Koontz. Haven't got a clue about Dean Koontz so I checked crime, then fiction, then not sure where I was but ... found it! "Odd Thomas". At first the writing seemed mechanical, mentioning lawyers and police, slightly hard work for me but then I flicked randomly to page 139:
"From the hamper, Stormy produced a tupperware container filled with shelled walnuts that she had deep-fried and seasoned lightly with both salt and sugar".
Walking slowly back along the aisle, reading more, an exciting bit of storyline was coming, this was getting interesting, then ... I almost stumbled into the assistant. He ... he ...
was holding ... A COPY OF SKALLAGRIGG Yipeeeee!!
I jumped up and down child-like, "Yesss, brilliant, Wow!"
I was being loud, people were looking, I didn't care.
I wanted to cuddle him but he recoiled so I slowly calmed down, realising it might be better for him if I emulated a sane adult, "Thank you, I had hoped but really didn't expect this. Thanks really!"
Now I knew - knew that today - today I would find and buy every single book on my list! Knew it with a certainty!! Do you ever get days like that?
The next item was a challenge, "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov. The Amazon reviewers loved or hated this novel, they said things like, sinister, disturbing, paedoph---. Now you see why it might be a challenge. (I cut the paedo word short because I don't want Google thinking this post might be a discussion of that particular topic.)
But they also said:
"the book took me a long time to read, far longer than many larger novels ... alliteration, puns, word-play, allusions, metaphor, simile, poetry, lyricism, humour, wit, sarcasm".
Considering my limited attention span and lack of literary education this seemed a doubtful choice and possibly over ambitious, so I started reading, and something surprising happened, listen ... page 166:
"A combination of naïveté and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue sulks and rosy mirth, Lolita when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat ... Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines ..."
Carrying on, the words were honey flowing into my head, like an injection of rich vanilla fudge. Although there were snippets I didn't understand, it was wonderful. I could picture myself sitting for hours tracing through these pages, with a table and a large dictionary. Not sure how I'll deal with the challenge of the subject matter, but how could I not buy this book?
A problem was brewing, these paperbacks didn't all fit into my £10 token. I chose "Skallagrigg", got a penny in change, then thought for a minute. Rarely do I find good material to read in a stationers - previous gift tokens have left me with a large collection of pens and envelopes. But I took my optimism off to W.H.Smith anyhow ... to be pleasantly surprised: they had both Koontz and Lolita.
Browsing through the shelves, took me past a small girl at a window looking out from a title called "Roots of Evil" by Sarah Rayne. Anyone know this author? I hate being swayed by cover images, but this one has been doctored to look particularly haunting. It drew me because her facial features reminded me of Jody Foster. The back cover read:
"Lucy ... discovers the truth about her family's dark and often poignant history - a history which spans the glittering concert halls of 1920s Vienna to the bleak environs of wartime Auschwitz."
Auschwitz. That word has some meaning, and a challenge, for me. The challenge is a strange, complex thing, nothing to do with xenophobia or being Jewish. Maybe I'll blog about it one day, if I can find the words. It also seemed to be about a film called Alraune and there's some blurb inside the cover about this being a real film though I haven't heard of it.
Page 251, I read:
"Mariana Trent was trying to get through the tiny window, crying out to the people below to help her. It was appalling to see her like this, the silk skirt rucked up above her knees, her legs cut and bleeding from the jagged window-frame, and her face crimson and shiny from the heat. There was a terrible moment when Lucy thought her mother's head looked exactly like a giant baked apple in the oven - just at the moment when the apple-skin had turned scarlet with the heat and was starting to split, and all the juices were running out".
Ouch, a jolt of emotive shock treatment, that was a bit raw! But the challenge had already bitten, the title joined the other two, the only purchase of the day not recommended by a blogger.
Three books, £22 worth of tokens, three pennies in change, I went off smiling and happy, to Seriously Big Bookshop Two. This one had a café, and lots of stairs to climb to the fiction floor, the aim being to find "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts. Considering the title and knowing from the reviews and from Sketches that this was set in India, it seemed I may have met a stumbling block. Maybe I couldn't buy this book here?
Still, I took my optimism to the enquiry desk, "Hi, I'm looking for a something called Shantar... um, Shantar .."
Took out my list to check the spelling and show him but he just looked at me and said, "Shantaram."
"You've heard of this book?", I asked surprised,
"I've read it", he said.
"You've read it? Really? What's it like?"
"It's a great read", he took me right over to the shelf and pulled it out.
I could hardly believe it, but of course, this was the day when I was going to get everything on my list. Now I loved finding this book but I have a bone to pick with Sketches. There are nine hundred and thirty-three pages and the writing's small, and it took the author thirteen years to write!! I would risk a literary hernia here, so it seemed wise to sample it over a coffee.
On the way, looked at Bill Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything". Liked it a lot but the first thing I read was: "it isn't easy being an organism".
Now that's the kind of thing I'd say. This will sound pretty silly but the more I read, the more this similarity left me thinking that I might blog less, because his dry wit is so like mine (although he's accomplished and I'm a peanut), that I'd end up unintentionally plagiarising. Had no choice but to put it down, even though it's the kind of book I'd love. Daft, aren't I?
I strolled past a non-fiction shelf, and saw but didn't stop to read. "Who Won the Oil Wars", published by a suspiciously named Conspiracy Books. Why does it use the past tense, is it a foregone conclusion now? "PetroDollar Warfare", "Blood and Oil in Central Asia", a whole stream of oil based views.
A political reaction crept into the first draft of this post, polluted it, polluted my happy post, I have since stripped it out!
Picked up a black paperback that had crept into my peripheral vision, an impulse, and kept walking.
The café was busy, couldn't get a good seat. You know, the tables upstairs where you can disappear into the folds of the shelving and furtively read, or observe other book-junkies (why did I say that? can't call myself a book-junkie), so I was confined to the main floor, a table already cluttered with someone else's leftovers - and the coffee was slightly too watery, too bitter and not remotely hot.
The black book was "Lila: An Inquiry into Morals" by Robert Pirsig (who wrote "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"), and I'd grabbed it mistakenly thinking it might be light reading. Ouch! What weighty subject matter. But then I've always been curiously attracted to philosophy, a moth-like fascination with enlightened ideas. Read this for a while wondering if I could cope, this kind of stuff might take months-years to read.
I put it down and picked up Shantaram. Page 208:
"Bombay's lepers ... At other times they set up their camp on a swampy patch of vacant land or some outfall for industrial waste. When I first visited them with Abdullah, that day, I found that they'd built their ragged shelters on the rusty stones of a railway siding near the suburb of Khar"
I became curious about Bombay (now Mumbai) and it's lepers, but then something odd happened. It went on to describe a railway depot:
"a vast shunting area - an open space marked by dozens of railway lines and their confluences. At the outer edges, high wire fences enclosed the space."
This description, it jogged a memory, a forgotten memory, of me standing in a huge railway depot one night. India, over twenty-five years ago. It was Jammu Railway Station, and I was lying between stationary goods carriages in the dark, on some filthy, sooty ground, some distance from the main station. I had dysentery. I was trying to get out of the place. I'd forgotten this memory.
There was absolutely no doubt now, about Shantaram, but I had to wake myself from this odd recollection. There were more things on my list and time was passing.
I'd only managed two sips of coffee. Nowhere to take my mess and no space on the serving counter, so my own cluttered leftovers were added to the junk on the table for the next customer.
Having run out of tokens, I paid for Shantaram using hard cash then headed back to Seriously Big Bookshop One. Now, to avoid leaving you with the idea that I have a fascination with bookshops, I'll tell a fib and say that my body needed the exercise.
Back out, into the rain, a fifteen minute walk then up the stairs to Richard Bach's "Illusions of a Reluctant Messiah". Opening this, I read about someone walking on water then swimming in rock. A spiritual but seemingly non-religious, exploration. The format was small and thin, reminding me of a miniature book of poetry I once saw by Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese author, but the price was the same as the largest paperback I'd bought so far. Cash was running short now and there was still something else to buy so this would have to wait. Tried to put it back on the shelf - a tight fit on a packed shelf - but it wouldn't go. After a minute of unsuccessful squeezing it popped back out and landed on the floor, flipping open and releasing my folded book list which I must have left inside! Dearie me, that was close, how far would I have gotten without my book list!?
Found Patrick White's "The Tree of Man" and studied it. There was something about this title and that something was nagging at me. Trying to remember, but not really a memory, more like a feeling. I think I have this book! One corner in my acre of junk storage at home, is devoted to boxes of reading material and I think Patrick White is in there. No memory of having read it though. I put it back down and resolved to search through my junk.
My last visit was to children's 8-12, reached via a journey to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, was one of those little sights that stops you in your tracks. The first shelves any basement book-buff gets to see in this shop, are Islam and Judaica, right next to each other. A large green copy of "History of Islamic Philosophy" was sitting almost alongside Anne Frank's Diary. I had been wondering what might constitute, 'living dangerously' for bookshop staff. Maybe this poignant juxtaposition of cultural reading is the result?
Was quite tempted to flick through "History" but it was an almost three inch thick humungous monster of a paperback. Perhaps some knowledgeable person can explain it to me, over lunch and a couple of lifetimes.
Foraging, I browsed and picked up "Introducing Psychological Research", a pet subject of mine (cough, choke). Um, no, what was interesting was the quite fascinating image on the front, a colour and shape piece by Kandinsky. Hadn't seen this before. See how easily I get distracted?
Finally, I found my last book, a fantasy novel by Garth Nix called "Lirael". Flipped it open, page 169:
" 'Not even time to cast a diamond of protection', Sam muttered to himself. He had never actually been into Death by himself before. He'd gone only with his mother, the Abhorsen ..."
Anyone familiar with Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy will know why the idea of "going into Death" can make refreshing and unusual reading. I knew now that I'd love this book. But there was (another) catch. It was the second in a series and the first title, "Sabriel", wasn't on the shelf.
Again I tracked down an assistant, who, after helpfully checking her computer said, "Yes, there's one in stock", but then she couldn't find it either. We hunted through adjacent shelves with no luck. She looked at me with a "Sorry" in her eyes.
"No!", I thought, this can't be allowed to happen, it's my special book day!! I desperately tried to think of a spell I could use, maybe a 'triangle of finding' ... instead I pulled a face, popped my eyes out, squeezed a pair of fluffy eyebrows together and tried to look childishly disappointed and upset. She recoiled as if some evil wizzard of fiction had suddenly come alive, but it seemed to work, "Actually we do have another children's section. Wait here and I'll go and have a look". She turned and half-walked, half-ran.
Meanwhile I browsed. Where did all these Philip Pullman titles come from? "I Was a Rat", "The Scarecrow and His Servant", "Count Karstein". None of these are mentioned in my editions of "Dark materials" or the Sally Lockhart series and I'd never seen them before. Why has no one told me of this wonderful, heavenly place called Children's 8-12? I was just about to pick up "Scarecrow" when the brave assistant, the gorgeous assistant I'd just fallen in love with, appeared and presented me with the last copy of "Sabriel".
So now what?
Here are 3,396 pages of new fiction to read. That's new fiction, and doesn't include the re-reading I had hoped to get in, of "The Wolves of Time", "His Dark Materials", "The Silmarillion" and "Lord of The Rings", totalling 3,810 pages. Nor does it include the 7,078 pages of "The History of Middle Earth" and "The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh", both of which I promised to try and get through this century.
With a grand total of 14,284 pages, I feel like a tortoise who has set himself the task of climbing Mount Everest.
How can I possibly fit all these words into such a small brain, a brain which regularly exhibits the consistency and intellectual capacity of a teaspoon of peanut butter?
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllp!!!
And ...... what to read first?
Labels: Cut me open, Shiny things
