What Are You Reading? Feb 07

Jury service, Bink? Yikes!

singersgirl, yes that's the one I'm sure

Have you seen the new movie? It had such a good review.

Ah, on the subject of first quasi-autobiog novellas, Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin - needs a bit of re-publicising. Marvellous thing.

I really should do some work now!

olivia manning is wonderful.

Is that "Other voices, other rooms", which was his first novella and is quasi-autobiographical? That's the one where he realises that the mysterious figure he's been seeing is the old guy in drag.

oh and there's some Truman Capote which is up there with whoever you might say: the end of, which book is it, when an elderly man guesses his young relative may be gay and looks "with an overwhelming question in his eyes"

btw I'd always thought it was rack - as in ref. to grisly torture device

Olivia Manning: completely new one on me!!
Robertson Davies: dh very keen. Had impression somewhat too cosy? Which is silly of me.
Never read Quincunx: that's a good idea too.

• and other ideas - thanks everyone!!

Oh, and just by the way on all these Tales of Adversity - I saw a really shameful strapline the other day: "and then one day in her preteen years - was it the day when she was introduced to drink, drugs and sex? - her tear-jerking story becomes a journey through utter hell".

It's the escalation of misery I object to.

Anecdote: some friends while very young and newly outly gay went to see their first gay porn movie. They got horrified quite quickly and went to leave - and the manager barred their way and said "But wait! There's MORE!"

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While you are there pruni does wrack therefore derive from wreck/shipwreck then?

I really like "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell", too, and thought it was a good story with a clever imagined recent history. That's also meaty, and got me through most of a week's holiday this summer.

Strangetown, I did read it once and thought it was magnificent . I just cannot go back. I don't think it is just the fact that I lost a baby around the time I finished reading it though

Think it's 'racking' and 'racked' (causing huge pain and distress, tearing apart). From 'rack'.

Have had to double check in Collins . How sad am I.

Balkan and Levant Trilogies good, definitely. Although I felt they were a rare example of improvement through dramatisation on the BBC.
Or my best buddy Robertson Davies - Salterton Trilogy or hugely entertaining slim volume of ghost stories High Spirits

Just read Anita Shreve Sea Glass quite liked it. I think it is next on the list on the MN bookclub.
Just started Carol Sheilds Mary Swann which I am liking too so far.

Marina - please give HDM a try it is worth the tears.
Maycontainstress I read Prep recently too, I think I may give it to my 18 year old cousin next - she spent a lot of time at boarding school...

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Or maybe rack
Bink have you read Georges Perec's "Life: A User's Manual". There is a recent, good translation I think. Or, if your French is up to it, in the original.

1. the vocab is nothing out of the ordinary
2. it is an episodic, jigsaw novel, perfect for putting down and picking up as you schlep round the corridors of justice

OOH nellieEllie - haven't read either of those. straight off to the bookshop at lunch!

Bink, have you read Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant trilogies? Probably, as you've read most things. If not, they are meaty enough to get you through jury service, and not too full of the things you don't want to read about (though I guess a bit of misery, unfulfilled dreams, dreary death etc is part of the human condition).

I have just been through a Truman Capote phase as I realised I hadn't read any of his stuff, and I also went through a John Le Carre stage recently, as I decided I didn't know much about spy fiction. I know enough now.

Wrack, I think

Pruni, I think Kate Atkinson's writing is unacknowledgedly autobiographical in this area, don't you? But she doesn't bang on about it interviews etc. Her writing is full of integrity.

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an irresponsible age by lavinia greenlaw. it's beautifully written, in a quiet way. i am really enjoying it, sad to be getting towards the end.

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Issymum, I think this feeling is very common. I have not been able to re-read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, nor go anywhere near Jamila Gavin's Coram Boy for this reason.
I just avoid the literary fiction on this sort of theme, (although I had to stay with Kate Atkinson's Case Histories) but I have to admit to feeling huge anger and disgust at the growth in the market for mass-readership memoirs of abusive childhoods/parental bereavement. I find this phenomenon in publishing really quite distasteful. Even walking past the "have your heart broken, thrill to this tragic tale of grim adversity" ghastly billboards at stations makes me angry.