Beyond Selidor

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 13: Makes me laugh

It seemed appropriate that today's answer by Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I can still remember the first time I read it — I started reading it in a cafe, and eventually had to leave the cafe because I couldn't prevent myself from laughing out loud. I'm awaiting the upcoming adaptation with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.

( The other days )

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 11: Secondhand bookshop gem

Nineteen Varieties of Gazelle, by Naomi Shihab Nye. This one is special to me because I was browsing secondhand bookshops with nymeth, and had planned to leave without buying anything, and as we left the shop, she handed me over this collection of Nye's poetry. It was such a kind and generous thing to do, on what had already been a really nice afternoon wandering around the bookshops — and the book itself is pretty good too!

( The other days )

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 10: Reminds me of someone I love

Most of the books I own remind me of someone I love, either because they were gifts from my mother (and I sort of feel that my love of reading was indirectly a gift from her, because she read aloud to me so much when I was a child, and encouraged me to be a reader), or from my husband, or I bought them on the recommendation of someone I love.

However, what I will go with today is The Girls in the Velvet Frame by Adele Geras. I mentioned this book in passing on an earlier day of the meme, but didn't go into much detail. It's the story of a family consisting of a widowed mother and her five daughters (ranging in age from thirteen to three), living in genteel poverty in Jerusalem in around 1918. There's also a flamboyant, outrageous unmarried aunt (whose stories of her misspent youth travelling around Europe both entrance and outrage her conservative Jewish relatives), and various neighbours in their block of flats who also feature as almost de facto family members; over the course of the book Rifka, the oldest daughter, begins working in a bakery and starts courting the young son of family friends, as part of a tentative future arranged marriage. Hovering just outside the pages is the missing oldest child of the family — the only son, who emigrated to New York seeking a better life, and who has essentially dropped off the map. He hasn't written, he hasn't sent money as promised, and it's a great source of worry and grief to his mother and sisters. The search for Isaac (the brother), is a subplot that meanders through the novel, involving the velvet framed photograph of the title, the community effort of Jewish migrants to New York, and the persistence and ingenuity of the five sisters. But the book's true focus is on the incidental stories of everyday life — sneaking out to feeding the neighbours' rabbits, tables laid with Eastern European cakes and tea, keeping up appearances in the face of poverty, snacking on sugared almonds at their aunt Mimi's house — and it is beautiful because of it.

Why it reminds me of someone I love — when I am neither Jewish, living in the early twentieth centuries, nor having ever experienced that kind of poverty — is its emphasis on the relationships between mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts (men are almost incidental, plot devices rather than characters, which is honestly often what my childhood felt like), and its insistence in putting the stories of women and girls front and centre. My mother isn't very like the mother in the story (although one of my aunts is quite like the aunt, something I recognised even when I first read the book as a seven-year-old), and I grew up with one younger sister, not four (although in adulthood I did end up with four younger sisters — the youngest three were born to my stepmother when I was seventeen, twenty-two, and twenty-nine respectively). But the book has always reminded me of my family, and the family dynamic of my maternal relatives — supportive to the point of bossy interference, in and out of each other's houses without warning or invitation, but happiest in each other's company in spite of everything. It was the first book I read that prioritised the kinds of relationships that were important to me when I was growing up, and showed that stories often treated as marginal, boring, or unimportant were worth being told.

( The other days )

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 8: Have more than one copy

Since Matthias and I moved in together and amalgamated our libraries, technically I have two copies of a lot of things (most notably, perhaps, pretty much every Discworld book), but I'll go with The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman here.

When I got married a year-and-a-half ago, my sraffie friends (people I'd met through a fansite for Pullman's His Dark Materials series) gave us a joint present of a crate filled with books, each one representing a story that was important to the individual giver, and each with a message written inside for us. The crate they came in was decorated as if it had previously stored Tokay from Jordan College, the fictional Oxford college in which His Dark Materials begins. And wonderful thelxiepia, my sister by choice, the best friend I made through those sites, and one of my bridesmaids, gave me The Tiger in the Well.

She did this in full knowledge that I already had a copy of the book, a battered version first bought from what I now know was the Waterstones in Gower St, when I was fourteen and on a trip to Europe and New York with my mother and sister. But it was a book for which the two of us shared a deep love — our favourite in Pullman's Sally Lockhart series, and one we'd discussed avidly at various points over the years. It was the perfect gift, and I'm glad I now have two copies as a result.

( The other days )

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 6: The one I always give as a gift

I always give Alison Lester's picture book, Magic Beach, as a gift to new babies. (It's not really at the right level for a newborn, but it's something they would be able to grow into and appreciate as a toddler.)

This book is an Australian children's classic, with absolutely gorgeous illustrations. It alternates between one page spread about mundane beachside activities (swimming, building sandcastles, paddling in rockpools and so on) and one page where the ordinary activity has become magical, and it's very reminiscent of my own childhood, where the first week of every summer holiday was spent 'down the coast' (Broulee, on the south coast of New South Wales, one of the many seaside towns to which Canberrans decamped during their summer holidays), visits to my mother's family in Sydney would always be accompanied by long hours spent in the ocean (even in winter), and most of my childhood holiday memories consist of bobbing around like a cork at various beaches, accompanied by a pack of kids — relatives, or the children of family friends. When I was a child and read Magic Beach for the first time, I always visualised the eponymous beach as Broulee.

So I give this book, with all those memories behind it, not because I expect the children in question to have similar experiences (indeed, most of the babies I've given it to, such as my cousin's daughter, who lives in Seoul, or my friends' son, who lives in Anglesey) are likely never to swim in the ocean. What I'm giving them, I think, is that sense of freedom, and space, and movement, which makes everyday life seem magical.

( The other days )

I've already mentioned this on Twitter, but I thought it worth posting about here too. I will be going to this author event in London with Samantha Shannon, Zen Cho, Tasha Suri and Zoe Marriott, and would really love to have some company.

I often go to signings, 'in conversation', or similar events, but I almost always end up going on my own, because most of my friends who like the same authors live on the opposite side of the country (or the world), and while I don't mind being on my own, it is a little lonely.

So this post is basically me asking awkwardly if anyone who is either already going to the event, or who thinks it sounds fun and wants to book a ticket would like to meet up in the Waterstones and hang out during the panel.

If this is you, send me a message and we can sort out the details. I would really love to meet up (and if you're like me and get really stressed out about whether people you've interacted with online consider you enough of a friend to want to meet 'in real life,' if we mutually subscribe to each other's journals here and have interacted, you definitely fall into the category of 'people I'd be happy to meet up with at an author event'), and I think the panel is going to be really great. So...get in touch!

Thirty Day Book Meme, Day 3: One with a blue cover.

I love that this is a prompt. My librarian heart is laughing and laughing.

Over the years I've no doubt read many books with blue covers, but I went with The Bone Season, the first in Samantha Shannon's wonderful dystopian series, because it's one of my favourites, and because its cover, inspired by the sundial in Seven Dials in London, is gorgeous. I reviewed the book some time ago, so rather than rehashing it again, I'll link to that review. The one-sentence summary is that it's a dystopian novel, whose heroine is captured from London (where she leads a double life as a government official's daughter by day and a member of a criminal clairvoyant syndicate by night) and taken to a prison camp in Oxford, where she learns about the terrifying supernatural powers really running things behind the scenes. I love the book for its setting — particularly the bits that take place in my favourite parts of London — its wonderful heroine (who is, I feel, realistically terrified by the situations in which she finds herself, and makes more morally grey compromises than I feel most dystopian YA heroines normally do), and the central romance (although your mileage may vary on this, as it's very Stockholm Syndrome-y with a massive power imbalance, but what can I say? the id wants what it wants).

( The other days )

By a strange coincidence, I posted a review of another Samantha Shannon book today, her standalone epic fantasy The Priory of the Orange Tree. This is a very different beast to the Bone Season series — it's a sweeping epic fantasy, inspired by Elizabethan England and Tokugawa Japan, about the uses and misuses of history, with dragons. You can read my review here.

Other books I've finished or started this weekend are Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (a dizzying blend of various African myths and histories, a straightforward quest story about people with supernatural powers hunting for a lost child, but very tough going due to the meandering, nested style of labyrinthine stories within stories, suddenly starts to have a plot about fifty per cent of the way in, and extraordinarily bleak in its worldview), My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Nigerian noir novel about an older sister who finds herself repeatedly responsible for cleaning up the bodies of men killed by her younger sister; it's also about the double edged sword that beauty can become — at once a weapon, and something that can be wielded against you), and The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark (another foray into his alternate, steampunk Cairo where djinn and other supernatural beings roam the streets).

It's been a pretty miserable, cold weekend, which I guess is what explains all the media consumption — as well as all the books, I watched BlacKkKlansman with Matthias (which I think was robbed in terms of the number of Oscars it ultimately won — it was excellent), along with various episodes of TV shows. It's been raining on and off, and, to be honest, leaving the house was not a particularly attractive prospect!

I came across this book meme a while ago, and had been waiting until I had a clear month or so to complete it. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, so feel free to steal it and do the meme yourself if you'd like.

Day one is a tough one: favourite book from childhood.

Now, depending on how old I was when you asked me this question, the answer would change quite a bit. I am a fairly loyal reader, and even in childhood I tended to have long stretches of time where a particular book was my favourite — and these can roughly be set out as follows:

( Books behind the cut )

As I said before, I can talk about favourite childhood books forever, and would love to hear about yours, or discuss any of my favourites, in the comments.

( The other days )

Massive Attack was everything I could have hoped for and more. I'm not, generally, someone who gets overwhelmed with the experience of live music, but there are rare exceptions, and this was one of them. I didn't quite realise how emotional it would make me, to see the album that I've loved so much since I was a teenager, in awe at its wordplay and dark bass and vocals both soaring and cthonic, brought to life. To hear those words, that have been at once formative foundation and the armour in which I've wrapped myself for more than twenty years, sung aloud. I was lost the minute I walked out into the Tube station and saw this (as I said to Matthias, it's moments like this that I love London, that ridiculous city). And then they sang my favourite song of all time: not just my favourite Massive Attack song, but my favourite song by any artist. I've heard Robert Del Naja whisper-growl we can unwind/ all these half flaws, and it's making up for two decades of concert regrets.

(Two links that probably sum up the concert very well — a review of the show, and an interview with the band.)

We stayed overnight in London after the concert — leaving the O2 to dense, atmospheric fog which somehow felt perfectly in keeping with the mood evoked by the music, and which was still around on Saturday morning, shrouding the post-apocalyptic wasteland which is Canning Town at 7am with a vaguely Luther-ish air. After a quick breakfast in one of my favourite Bloomsbury cafes (oh, London coffee), we wandered up to the British Museum, joining the thronging crowds on the penultimate day of an exhibition on Ashurbanipal, who was an Assyrian ruler. If the self-aggrandising quotes from his letters are to be believed he seemed rather like a more competent version of the menace currently President of the US — he won the vastest empire through battles, he solved all the complicated mathematic problems, sages and soothsayers contacted him for his predictions of the future, and so on. I was mainly struck by how much material had survived — so many letters and stories and tax records on clay tablets, so many incredible carved decorative stones, and so on. As most of this material comes from very dangerous parts of the world (mainly modern-day Iraq and Syria), there is great concern for its safety, and the final room of the exhibition had a video with interviews with Iraqi archaeologists, who had worked on the exhibition and who had been trained by the British Museum in 'disaster archaeology' (i.e. working in high-risk areas with materials that are under threat), and these archaeologists are currently excavating new sites in the region, with the aim that the materials unearthed will remain in Iraq. They were all very passionate about this work, but it sounds at once very dangerous, and a race against time.

I had grand plans today for writing book reviews, and a letter for waybackexchange, but other than a bit of pottering around in the garden (we now should hopefully have home-grown zucchini and radishes in a few months' time) and reading a KJ Charles book in the sun, I've failed dismally to have a productive Sunday.

At least I seem to have got my reading groove back. I read Tara Westover's memoir Educated on the train to and from London, which, given how much of it involves studying at Cambridge (indeed, Westover was a friend of one of my Cambridge friends during her time there), seemed fitting. She's obviously lived a very interesting life — brought up as the daughter of fundamentalist Mormons who spent most of her childhood as Doomsday survivalists, completely neglecting her education, and raising her and her siblings in a wholly abusive environment, self-educating herself to the point that she could go to university, and then ending up a PhD student at Cambridge — and if I wished that she would condemn her parents in stronger terms, that probably says more about me than it does about her.

I also read a handful of Tor.com free short stories — three on the basis of recommendations from eglantiere ('What Mario Scietto Says' by Emmy Laybourne, 'Cold Wind' by Nicola Griffith, and 'The Tallest Doll in New York City' by Maria Dahvana Headley), and one of the basis of a review by Amal El-Mohtar ('A Dead Djinn in Cairo' by P. Djèlí Clark). I liked them all except the Laybourne, which, given that its point-of-view character is a survivalist prepper experiencing an apocalypse, and given what I said above about the Westover book, was never going to work for me. I really find it hard to engage with a narrative that expects me to sympathise with survivalists, or which implies that they were right to prep for the apocalypse.

Matthias and I also found time last night to finish off the fifth season of Luther, which didn't work for me for a variety of reasons, the main one being that I felt the writers lost their sense of the characters, who all behaved in ways which were for me widely out of character. I'm not sure if there'll be another season, and I'm not sure if some of the writing decisions made in this one are salvageable, but in any case I was not particularly impressed.

How has everyone been enjoying their weekends?

First up, nominations have now opened for waybackexchange, so if you're thinking of participating, you have until 20th February to get your nominations in. I've already used up all my nomination slots, but if anyone has any free, please do drop me a comment here (or a DM) as I have at least one other fandom I'd love to get nominated.

ladytharen has created a great new comm for Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology, so if you're interested, please do think about joining!


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( This week's books )

( This week's TV )

( Other weekend stuff )