October 2013 – BooksPlease

The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville

Published on October 31, 2013 by Margaret6 Comments

Last week I was thinking about taking Kate Grenville’s book, The Idea of Perfection back to the library without finishing it. But I gave it another go and this time it interested me enough to finish it. I thought her book The Secret River was brilliant, one of the best books I read last year and I also loved Sarah Thornhill, but I didn’t think The Idea of Perfection was as good as either of these, which surprised me as it won the 2001 Orange Prize for Fiction. That’s not to say I didn’t like it because I did, just not as much as the other two books.

I think the reason is that for the most part it lacked the drama of the other books and I found the beginning very slow. The title indicates the theme of the book with the characters all falling short of the impossible aim of perfection. Set in Karakarook, in New South Wales the two main characters are Douglas Cheeseman, an engineer who has come to pull down a quaint old bent bridge before it falls down and Harley Savage, who has come to advise the residents how to promote their inheritance. They both know they are far from perfect. On the other hand there is Felicity Porcelline, the local bank manager’s wife who thinks she is perfect and everything she does is aimed at perfection, which she doesn’t achieve either – just the opposite, in fact.

It’s quite a touching tale as Douglas and Harley, both middle aged and with failed marriages behind them, are shy awkward characters and although they are attracted to each other for most of the novel they find it almost impossible to express their feelings. They are both outsiders, neither fitting easily either into their own families or within society. Underlying their relationship is the conflict about the dilapidated bridge – should it be restored or replaced with a modern bridge? And just what should the proposed Pioneer Heritage Museum contain? – heirlooms, jewellery, silver teapots and lace christening robes, or the things Harley thinks are right – the really old shabby things that show how people used to live, the old bush-quilts made from old clothes, for example.

It’s the setting that really stands out – the dusty little country town in a valley in New South Wales, the hillsides, the river and the ‘huge pale sky, bleached with the heat.‘ Kate Grenville paints a picture of the town and its surrounding countryside with such detail that you can feel the heat and dust and see the buildings, the houses clinging to the hillside, tilting, patched and stained with rusting roofs and the dirt road leading out of Karakarook.

The strange thing is that after I finished reading it this book has grown on me as it were. And now I’ve written about I think I appreciate it more than I did whilst reading it. It’s precise writing, full of detail about the people and the places within its pages and also full of thoughts about love, loneliness, relationships and the impossibility of perfection.

First Chapter First Paragraph: Julius

Published on October 29, 2013 by Margaret14 Comments

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

One of the books I’m currently reading is Julius by Daphne du Maurier. The first chapter is called Childhood (1860-1872). It begins:

His first instinct was to stretch out his hands to the sky. The white clouds seemed so near to him, surely they were easy to hold and to caress, strange-moving, things belonging to the wide blue space of heaven.

They floated just above his head, they almost brushed his eyelids as they passed, and he only had to grasp the long curling fringe of them with his fingers and they would belong to him instead, becoming part of him for ever. Something in him whispered that he must clutch at the clouds and bring them down from the sky. So he held out his hands to them and they did not come. He cried out to them and they did not come. They passed away from him as though they had never been, indifferent and aloof; like wreaths of white smoke they were carried away by the wind, born of nothing, dissolving into nothing, a momentary breath that vanished in the air.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

I did and I’m finding it quite captivating. The ‘he’ in these first two paragraphs is Julius and right from his birth you can see him reaching out for things beyond his grasp.

Reading Challenges Update

Published on October 28, 2013 by Margaret3 Comments

This year I’ve been taking part in several reading challenges and as there are just over 10 weeks of the year left I thought it was time to see how I’ve been doing. I’m seriously thinking about making this blog a Challenge Free Zone next year! I always like the idea of taking part and then later in the year (like now) wonder why, because I do like to read spontaneously and not to a plan!

Actually, I’m doing OK with 5 challenges completed so far. The ones that I’m struggling with are the Mount TBR Reading Challenge and the This Isn’t Fiction Challenge, but that doesn’t surprise me at all.

My Progress:

The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge – ongoing. I don’t really count this as a challenge because it’s just reading Agatha Christie’s books. This year I’ve read 7 of her books so far. I’ll be carrying on with this next year.

Tea and Books Challenge – completed. This is a challenge to read books of 650 pages and over. My target was to read 4 books, and so far I’ve read 5 and hope to finish 6 by the end of the year. I may do this again next year.

What’s in a Name 6 – completed. I do like this challenge, which is to read books in set categories relating solely to the title – it reminds me of books I’ve owned for a while and I like making the list. Next year? It depends on the categories and if Beth carries on with it.

Historical Fiction Challenge 2013 – completed. My target was to read 15 books and I’ve got to 25 so far – there will be more by the end of the year.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2013 – no where nearly completed. I’m attempting Mount Ararat, that is, to read 48 books from my own bookshelves. So far I’ve read 27. This will have to be done next year too!

This Isn’t Fiction Reading Challenge – ie read non-fiction. I’m not doing too well here either with just 9 books read, when my target is 20 or more books. I think I set my sights too high!

Once Upon a Time VII – completed. I chose Quest the First: To read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time categories, which I did.

R.I.P.Challenge VIII Challenge – completed. This ends on 31 October and I’ve already met my target for Peril the First: which is to read four books, any length, that you feel fit (the very broad definitions) of R.I.P. literature. I’ve read 6 books.

Speaking of Love by Angela Young

Published on October 28, 2013 by Margaret3 Comments

One day in 2007 I was in the library browsing the shelves when Angela Young’s debut novel Speaking of Love caught my eye. I’d been reading her blog and so knew at once I just had to read her book. I loved it and wrote about it in this post.

Now there’s a Kindle edition. In 2007 I wrote that it’s a book worth reading, moving but never sentimental. It’s about the need to communicate and to tell people we love them, it’s about the power and beauty of story-telling, and it’s about the difficulties and effects of living with someone with schizophrenia, burying frightening experiences and the way we lose control over events. And it’s full of beautiful descriptions of trees, gardens and the landscape, bringing the story alive.

Definitely a book worth reading!

The Year of Miracle and Grief by Leonid Borodin

Published on October 27, 2013 by Margaret

I received my copy of The Year of Miracle and Grief by Leonid Borodin, translated into English by Jennifer Bradshaw, for review from the publishers, Quartet Books. It’s a new edition due to be published in November, a beautiful little book – just 192 pages, and a pleasure to read.

Synopsis adapted from Quartet Books website:

Nearly thirty years after its first publication in English, in November Quartet Books will publish a brand new English edition of a classic fairytale, The Year of Miracle and Grief by Leonid Borodin. A twelve-year-old boy, the son of teachers, finds magic, mystery, romance, and sadness at beautiful Lake Baikal in Siberia. Deep in Siberia lies the second largest and deepest lake on earth, Lake Baikal. When a small boy arrives on its banks, he is amazed by the beauty of the lake and surrounding mountains. As this astonishment yields to inquisitiveness, he begins to explore the fairytale of the area.

My view:

This book combines the elements of fantasy and reality, so much so that the narrator is convinced that he is not a spinner of yarns, but that he is relating what actually happened in his childhood. Writing 25 years later, he is now free to tell the tale. And it is a magical and grief stricken tale, a tale of love, forgiveness and suffering!

As he explores the area he is fascinated by Lake Baikal and Dead Man’s Crag, a high bare crag except for a pine tree on its peak, a pine tree with just four branches, two pointing up towards the sky and two larger ones pointing down along the trunk. Despite warnings not to climb the Crag he does just that and it is there that he meets a woman sitting on a throne of stone in a niche hollowed out of the rock. This is Sarma, a wrinkled old woman, so old it was impossible to imagine anyone older:

Her hermetically sealed lips were supported by a large jutting chin which came up to meet her nose, and her eyes were so deeply sunk into the network of wrinkles that the old woman seemed to be blind. She was wearing flowing sky-blue clothes, and this flowing blue enveloped her from head to foot; only her hands, encased in sky-blue gloves reaching to the elbow, contradicted the impression that the blue cocoon contained only a head. (pages 44-5)

She is a descendent of the Great Sibir (the origin of the name Siberia). She flooded Prince Baikolla’s valley, the Valley of the Young Moon, creating Lake Baikal, and guards the cave/underground castle where she holds the Prince and his daughter Ri captive, bewitched by a spell because the Prince had killed her son. But she allows the boy to enter the cave where he falls in love with Ri and begs Sarma to release her. What follows is a dramatic transformation in the boy’s life.

Borodin was a Christian and a Soviet dissident. He was born in 1938 in Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal and both his parents were teachers, like the boy in his book. He was imprisoned twice and wrote A Year of Miracle and Grief whilst in prison. It contains Christian elements focussing on the nature of forgiveness and suffering. He won the 2002 Solzhenitsyn Prize and died in 2011.

Other elements of this book are the landscape, the lake and the mountains and the miracle that takes place in experiencing the beauty of the world, the transformation of your thoughts, feelings and your entire being ‘into a sensation of total rapture in the presence of a miracle.’ (page 8).

Saturday Snapshots

Published on October 26, 2013 by Margaret13 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted about the Attack of the Sparrows on the House Martins’ nest. A couple of weeks later the house martins all left and flew off to spend the winter in Africa. Each year they use our house as a building site for their nests. They are beautiful little birds and I love to see them flying high in the sky above our house and the chicks as they poke their heads out of the nest waiting to be fed.

It’s illegal to remove their nests whilst they are building or using them as they’re protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and you could get fined up to £5,000 and/or a 6 month prison sentence for every bird, egg or nest destroyed. And as they’re on the Amber list (because of recent decline in numbers) the RSPB is encouraging people to help them nest.

Well, they didn’t need any encouragement from us and built four nests in the eaves of our house. One was above the living room window, so you can imagine the mess their droppings made on the window and window sill. But now they’ve gone David has taken the nests down and cleaned up the mess they left behind, so he could sadolin the soffits and fascias. The nests came away mainly in one piece. My photos show how they’re constructed – mainly of mud and sticks formed into a cup shape.