Gift Of Stones, Jim Crace

Pure In Heart, Susan Hill

Book 2 in the Simon Serrailler crime series is starting to feel a little like a cross between The Archers and Midsomer Murders. It’s not quite a domestic drama and it’s not quite driven by the police procedural elements.

I’m wondering whether poor Martha Serrailler is long for this world… angels of death seem to be working her care home.

The Measure Of My Days, Florida Scott-Maxwell

So, reading this for my book group. It’s not my usual reading material: non-fiction, no plot or chronology, written by an eighty-two year-old playwright and Jungian psychologist.

It’s not an autobiography, not even a memoir. It is, according to itself, a notebook containing her observations on age and on society. Rambling. Unstructured. Containing a lifetime of knowledge, experience and opinion ruminated upon in the isolation of age.

It’s essentially a blog. And so far we have considered the nature of evil, humanity and age.

As an example, I’ll leave this snippet which I found quite moving.

Man Booker 2015 Longlist

  
The Man Booker prize, which is not without its politics, controversies and critics has, nevertheless furnished me with some of my most memorable reads recently: Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, which led me to her wonderful The Rehearsal, Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale For The Time Being, How To Be Both by Ali Smith, Niall Williams’ The History Of The Rain. Gorgeous, unique and powerful – occasionally experimental – voices. 

The year’s list (the covers for which look amazing) are:

Bill Clegg (U.S.), Did You Ever Have a Family          

Anne Enright (Ireland), The Green Road 

Marlon James (Jamaica), A Brief History of Seven Killings 

Laila Lalami (U.S.), The Moor’s Account

Tom McCarthy (U.K.), Satin Island 

Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria), The Fishermen 

Andrew O’Hagan (U.K.), The Illuminations 

Marilynne Robinson (U.S.), Lila 

Anuradha Roy (India), Sleeping on Jupiter 

Sunjeev Sahota (U.K.), The Year of the Runaways 

Anna Smaill (New Zealand), The Chimes 

Anne Tyler (U.S.), A Spool of Blue Thread 

Hanya Yanagihara (U.S.), A Little Life 

2015 Reading Challenge Half Way Review

So hopefully the above link has embedded the Google Sheets Spreadsheet into the blog to share how many of the 52 books I’ve read and whether – after a little hiatus – I have managed to keep on track.

Seem to be struggling with the Book Turned Into a Movie category… I’m sure that cannot be too tricky!

Language Acquisition

I’m sat at home as I type this with a little girl cuddling on my lap. She’ll be two in July. She is mine, I hasten to add… I didn’t kidnap her for the sake of a blog post!

We’re still waiting for her to talk which is the point of this post. She relies almost entirely on /m/ sounds. Now, in fairness, there is a wide range of expression in her /m/s and we can tell the difference between an angry /m/ and a happy /m/ and a naughty /m/ and an asking /m/. Mmmmmm and Mmm? and MMMMmmmmm and mmmmmmmmmm… And she can laugh both spontaneously and with somewhat dramatised /ha/ /ha/ /ha/ sounds. 

She is capable of producing other sounds: we’ve had /d/ sounds which seems lmore like a Simpsons’ “D’oh” rather than anything meaning “dad” but we have had /æ/ sounds, generally in the context of singing Row Row Row Your Boat.  Or, as here, in reenacting scenes from Hammer Horror’s Dracula. 

I have had arguments with both my other daughter and health visitor as to whether these noises constitute ‘words’ or ‘speaking’. Personally, without any sense of consistent semantics, I think they are just noises, experimentation and play. 

Spoiler Alerts

I’ve never fully understood the huge concern people have with spoilers… Maybe because I’m one of those people who prefer the journey to the destination. 

Anyway, I’m the event that others might be upset, here be spoilers:

  

Memoirs of Lady Trent

Now these are jolly nice looking covers. And Dragons!

    
  

You had one job…

I have always hankered for a job where I can sell my words. I think I’m pretty good with words when I want to be. I surround myself with exquisite, delicate, evocative and earthy words on a daily basis.

So, when I buy a birthday card, a card for which someone has been paid for the quality of their words, it pains me to see this.

Edit

I can accept the sequence of fragments as a stylistic pastiche. But the circled comma splices annoy me, especially the second one. They detract from the changes in tone; they lose rhythm and pace; they are just wrong.

But it is got worse! Turning to the inside of the card, I saw this!

A sentence begun with a lower case letter? A grocer’s apostrophe! From a professional writer! Who was paid!

I hang my head in shame.

Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge

She dreamed that she was in a dressmaker’s shop to be measured, but that when she took off her own frock to try on the new one, she found she had another dress on underneath. She took off that one as well, only to find yet another dress beneath that one. Dress after dress she removed, becoming thinner and thinner all the while, until it came to her that in the end there would be nothing left of her, except a pile of discarded clothes and a disembodied wail.