Well that was a month. I usually don’t mind January as much as other people do. After all, it starts with my birthday and ends with the first spring flowers. Plus I really don’t mind cold weather for walking the dog in crunchy frost and then warming up at home with a hot drink and a book.
But I have to say this year January was tough. It’s been wet. World news is awful. And it turns out that recovering from shoulder surgery is more slow and painful than I anticipated. Plus, I have yet to see a spring flower that’s, you know, flowering (in fairness, I haven’t left the house all that much).
The list below makes it look like I read a lot of books in January. Which technically is true. But the pain and reduced range of movement I’m experiencing, though both are improving week on week, means it is still difficult for me to hold a book that requires both hands to read. So I’ve mostly restricted myself to my ereader (which I can use one-handed) and the set of tiny 50-page Penguin Modern mini classics that Tim bought me a few years ago. Plus a couple of chapbooks of Korean short stories from the University of East Anglia’s Yeoyu project.
One positive is that the ceasefire in Gaza appears to be holding, with hostages and prisoners being released and Palestinians returning to what’s left of their homes. I really truly hope this ceasefire leads to lasting peace – not under occupation.
Closer to home, our garden may not be in bloom yet but it is full of green shoots. So there’s that. And I decided a good project for helping my shoulder recover was building Lego. I completed the new set Tim gave me for my birthday – a set of a dozen red roses in three different designs. And I got halfway through the Lego bookshop. (I’ve built the bookshop half, but the full set includes an attached townhouse.) They make pretty good home office decorations now that I’m back working full time.
Books read
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
I figured I would start the year with a reread of a book I love. I already owned an ebook omnibus of Du Maurier novels so this was an easy choice. This is probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve read Rebecca. I genuinely get a lot out of it every time. In my 2011 reread, I remember being frustrated by the narrator’s failure to assert herself. This time I was more annoyed by her husband Maxim who fails to tell her he didn’t really like his first wife (excusable I guess not to speak ill of the dead or raise suspicion around her death). But more damningly he leaves his new young wife to flounder in a role she is clearly unfamiliar with. How can he not see that she needs help, advice, reassurance? I still love this book. It’s so psychologically insightful.
French Kissing by Catherine Sanderson
As I was already on a nostalgia bent I thought I would finally read this novel by a former blogger (Petite Anglaise) who I read religiously back in the early 2000s. It’s a comedic romance about a British woman living in Paris who has separated from her French boyfriend and is raising their young child alone. She feels she is ready now to try dating again. Cue lots of funny encounters. It’s predictable (possibly especially so to anyone who remembers how closely this parallels Sanderson’s own life) and sweet.
Agatha Christie: a Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley
As a tween and teen I was a voracious reader and devoured pretty much every book of fiction at our local library. A typical small-town British establishment, this meant a lot of Agatha Christie (and also a lot of Mills & Boon, but that’s a story for another time). I’ve not read her much in adult life but I have learned bits and pieces about her that intrigue me. There’s the famous fugue episode when she disappeared of course. But also the fact she bankrolled her second husband’s archaeology career and contributed a fair bit of her own time to it. Worsley’s biography is excellent. It doesn’t skate over Christie’s faults (antisemitism, racism, homophobia) and doesn’t pretend to know the whole truth where details are unclear. And it’s a really good read.
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
I’ve long been familiar with Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple books, as well as having read several standalones. But I had never picked up a Tommy and Tuppence mystery. So I started at the beginning. The basis of the plot is so contrived as to be ridiculous but the adventure is fun and exciting. I quite like Tommy and Tuppence as a modern young couple (for the 1920s). There were definitely some racist and antisemitic moments but also moments where Christie appears to be aiming to defy the presumed xenophobic prejudices of her readers.
The Finger by William S Burroughs
A Penguin Modern mini, this is a collection of “sketches” that might be fact or fiction but are definitely drug-influenced. There was the occasional phrase or detail I liked, but for the most part I didn’t enjoy this.
The Skeleton’s Holiday by Leonora Carrington
Translated from French
A Penguin Modern mini, these are horror-inflected short stories. Again, I didn’t really get on with these. They just seemed weird for weird’s sake to me.
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde
Finally, a Penguin Modern mini I loved! These are essays written over several years by self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Lorde. They are insightful, instructional, brilliant.
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
I’d seen this on “staff recommends” shelves and tables in a few bookshops lately so I thought I’d check it out. It’s a family saga, told in that slightly detached storytelling manner that can make it hard to get to know characters. William Waters is sad and lonely when he meets Julia Padavano at college. She gives him direction where he had none and makes him part of her family – including her three sisters. Over the course of their lives, love and loyalty are tested and nothing quite works out the way any of them had planned or expected. A really lovely book.
The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino
Translated from Italian
I loved Calvino’s non-fiction so I thought this Penguin Modern mini of short stories by him would also work for me. I like the concepts, I think, but I’m not sure about the results. In each case he’s taken a scientific development and spun from it a surreal interpretation. For instance, the title tale is based on the discovery that the Moon is gradually getting further from the Earth. Each month when the Moon is at its closest, the story’s characters row out to sea and climb up a ladder to the Moon to harvest its cheese. But as the Moon is receding from them, someone is going to get stuck there. Kind of brilliant but also not?
Four Russian Short Stories by Gazdanov and others
Translated from Russian
This is the class of Penguin Modern mini I find a little annoying. No doubt each of these four Russian writers produced enough material for their own tiny collection rather than being lumped together with nothing more in common than nationality? But that said I did like all the stories so that’s four new authors for me to look out for more of I guess.
The Missing Girl by Shirley Jackson
This Penguin Modern mini I did like. Short stories that put you on edge without necessarily having anything bad happen. They’re wonderfully atmospheric but they have plots and characters too. Quite an achievement in so few pages.
Europa by Han Kang
Translated from Korean
This is from a set of chapbooks that are short stories translated from Korean by Strangers Press. Han Kang is of course a Nobel Prize winning writer. The one of her novels I have read, The Vegetarian, I didn’t love, though I did think it was immensely well written. But I did love this. It depicts a friendship between a cis woman who has survived some unknown violence and a trans woman who only feels able to dress and act as her true self when with her friend.
Old Wrestler by Jeon Sungtae
Translated from Korean
Another Strangers Press chapbook. This is, as the title says, about an old wrestler. He is getting old and has suffered head trauma in his career. He is back in his hometown to attend the unveiling of a memorial. But he isn’t entirely compos mentis and knows it, which makes him dislike being in public. A gently sad story.
Letter From Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr
I read this on 20 January, which is Martin Luther King Jr Day in the US. It’s a powerful statement on the failure of white allies to the civil rights cause, and a defence of civil disobedience. Both messages resound as strong and relevant today. He is primarily addressing other faith leaders, so there is a lot of talk about faith and Christianity that doesn’t speak to me but is still an important part of who he was.
Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Death Chamber by Allen Ginsberg
Poetry works well in tiny 50-page collections. This set spans Ginsberg’s career and includes some work I really liked, some I wasn’t sure about, and some I actively did not like. It is packed with references to culture, politics and history. I’m sure I understand more now than when I first read Ginsberg in my late teens.
The Breakthrough by Daphne du Maurier
Unusually, this Penguin Modern mini contains just one short story. And it’s a good one. It’s a little bit SF, a little bit supernatural. But mostly it’s tapping into 1950s paranoia in a military research facility. Set in a remote rural location on England’s south coast, it has all the Du Maurier atmosphere. And an intriguing story to boot.
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
I started this book before my surgery, but then couldn’t hold it properly for a month. In the last week I found a few opportunities to sit with it resting on a pillow in my lap so I could finally finish this modern classic. I will try to write a full review soon as there is a lot going on in this novel. In brief, in 1970s New York City, middle-aged Connie tries to stand up to her niece’s abusive pimp and he has her committed to a mental institution. Conditions there are pretty bleak and no-one listens to her, or any other patient – particularly people of colour, but these patients are all poor, and therefore expendable. Connie’s one escape is her ability to contact a community in the far future. Piercy’s vision of the future is a fascinating one. In fact, everything about this book is fascinating and deeply feminist.
Happy February folks!
