And Now for Something Completely Different: Edinburgh Festival Fringe

I went to Edinburgh specifically for the Book Festival, and initially the thought of attending a Fringe play or two while I was there was only the cherry on top. But I have to say that it was the Fringe that I truly fell in love with: the Book Festival was great, but I’d gladly go back every year for this alone. The energy and enthusiasm involved really spoke to me, and I loved that, unlike the charming but self-contained book village at Charlotte Square Gardens, the Fringe takes over the entire city. It's the world's largest arts festival, and it's simply impossible to be in Edinburgh in August and remain unaware of it.

The Fringe is an open access or unjuried arts festivals, which means that anyone who can pay the registration fee can put on a show. This approach has been criticised, and yes, the lack of any selection criteria does mean that the quality of the program will inevitably be uneven. But then again, that's very much part of the appeal. The Fringe has been described as an "open forum for ideas", and that's exactly what I loved about it. Not every performance will be outstanding or meet professional standards, but the enthusiasm involved and the number of passionate and creative people (many of them incredibly young!) working together to make something like this happen more than make up for it. I was actually very lucky – though some of the performances I saw were better than others, all had more strengths than weaknesses and none felt like a waste of money or time. It was amazing to be able to witness so much creative energy in action, and I left feeling inspired, revived, and reminded of some of the things I love the most about life. After a very difficult summer on a personal level, this was something I really needed.
Read More

Read More......

The Rest of the Edinburgh Book Festival

As I told you yesterday, my first day at the Edinburgh Book Festival was by far the most exciting, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a wonderful time the rest of the week. This post will be a recap of all the other events I attended, followed by a few pictures of some of my other literary exploits.

It was only when writing this that I realised that with China Miéville’s cancellation, I attended nothing but children’s events during my whole time in Edinburgh. I could justify this in the name of professional interest, or through the fact that tickets are half the price of those to adult’s events, but my unapologetic love of children’s literature is a simpler and truer reason. I really enjoyed most of what I attended, and came back with a long mental list of additions to the TBR pile.

It was very interesting to notice that so many authors and creators across genres and media said very much the same things. By this I don’t mean that the sessions I attended were repetitive; just that I found the thematic similarities genuinely interesting. They had me wondering what the fact that so many of the authors I enjoy approach writing similarly might say about the reasons why I’m drawn to them to begin with. Some of the things they all had in common were a genuine respect for their audiences; a desire for their themes to emerge organically from their writing; and a complete willingness to give up exclusive authorial control over meaning and encourage readers to create their own. This might seem like a given, but I noticed that the authors whose talks didn’t appeal to me were exactly the ones who didn’t seem to approach writing this way.


Read More

Read More......

Patrick Ness + Neil Gaiman Ninja Reading = Best Bookish Day Ever?

Hi everyone! I came back from what were possibly the best holidays ever a few days ago, and I have so much to tell you that I’ll have to break it down into several posts. I’m afraid you’ll be sick and tired of hearing me go on about Edinburgh by the time I’m done, so I apologise in advance! I thought I’d do one general post about the Edinburgh Book Festival, one about the Fringe, and, to begin with, one about the most exciting day of all, which certainly deserves its own post: the day I met both Patrick Ness and Neil Gaiman.

I arrived in Edinburgh last Sunday, and the first event I attended was Patrick Ness and Moira Young’s “Different Worlds” session: Patrick Ness mostly focused on the Chaos Walking trilogy, and Moira Young on her debut novel Blood Red Road, also the first in a trilogy (and which I’m reading at the moment).


Fans queueing up for the event
Both authors began by answering the question, “Why dystopia?”: Patrick Ness said that dystopias are “a good place to explore metaphors about today”; they’re about the world as it is now, rather than any actual future scenarios. He also referred to his recent review of Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker, where he explains why he thinks dystopias particularly appeal to teen readers: they mirror the feeling of powerlessness teens often experience; of being surrounded by rules that feel arbitrary; of having the responsibilities but not the most of the privileges of adulthood. These stories are often a better representation of what living in the world feels like as a teen than realistic fiction. And, crucially, they show that even the darkest scenarios are survivable, which is important to anyone going through difficult times.

Moira Young added that her own series reflects her anxiety over current environmental issues, and Patrick Ness agreed that dystopia often comes from a place of anxiety. In his case, Chaos Walking reflects his anxiety over information overload. He asked the 13 and 14 year-olds in the audience to raise their hands, and said that people their age were growing up with far less privacy than anyone else in the history of the western world. A world with more monitoring than ever before leaves far less room for the mistakes everyone makes when they’re young to simply disappear, or for secrets to ever really be secrets.


yay
Ness also added that although his writing reflects specific concerns of his, these emerge organically from the story. His advice to young writers was not to worry about writing a story about this or that particular issue. The things they care about will find their way into their fiction, but if deliberately inserted, there’s a real danger that they’ll end up with a lesson or a mediocre “message novel”. Ness said his main goal as a novelist, especially a YA novelist, is to tell the truth as best as he can. This means no moralising or forced Hollywood happy endings. The world often does feel dark when you’re a teen; if you tell the truth and acknowledge that, the positive and hopeful aspects of the story will feel more real – they will have been earned. I think anyone who has read Chaos Walking will agree on the effectiveness of his approach.

Finally, both Ness and Young said they didn’t realise as they were writing that they were part of a dystopian “movement” or trend. Patrick Ness said that while he doesn’t at all mind being labelled a dystopian or sci-fi author, he doesn’t think genre labels should ever be the authors’ concern. Labels are helpful to readers, but they shouldn’t ever set limits to what authors write. Again he addressed any budding writers in the audience and told them, “Ignore the world when you write”. They should neither feel pressured to join any trends nor feel like they shouldn’t write something because it’s now a trend.

These are only a few highlights of a truly excellent session. After a whole week of attending Edinburgh Book Festival events, I appreciate how good it was all the more. The chair did an excellent job of making the most of the one hour time slot, of balancing each author’s participation, and of encouraging audience questions. This was by far the most interactive of all session I attended, and seeing such enthusiastic young readers take part made me incredibly happy. There was even a group of teen girls with amazing Chaos Walking t-shirts they had made themselves!


Patrick Ness and Moira Young with two young readers
Another thing that was lovely to see was how great Patrick Ness is with his young readers. He treats them as human beings and refuses to ever talk down to them. I could have easily guessed this from his writing, really, but it was still great to witness it in person. It makes me particularly happy as an aspiring YA librarian to see authors treat teens and children with such respect, but it also makes me happy as a person, period.


Eek!
There was a signing at the end, so I got to meet Patrick Ness and Moira Young, both of whom were very nice. I got my copies of Blood Red Road and A Monster Calls signed (sadly my Chaos Walking books are all stored away back home) and got to thank them both for an excellent session. Of course, all the things I had planned to say to Patrick Ness (like thanking him for trusting his readers to be smart regardless of their age, or for his amazing Carnegie Medal acceptance speech) completely vanished from my mind when my turn came, but that always happens. At least I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself, I don’t think.


My secret intrawebs identity came up thanks to the very nice girl ahead of me in line, who is also a Twitterer. Being the awkward and socially anxious person that I am, I’d never have brought it up myself. But it was still kind of cool to be recognised by a favourite author.

---

Patrick Ness and Moira Young’s session was at the same time as Neil Gaiman’s Guardian Book Club session on American Gods. I made the very difficult decision of attending Patrick Ness’ instead because I’m going to hear Neil Gaiman speak at the British Library early next month. But then, the day before I left to Edinburgh, I saw this tweet:



I knew it was going to be very hard to get tickets, but I also knew that my partner and I had a decade of experience of getting tickets to quick-to-sell-out events (being a big concert goer totally boosts your transferable skills!). So we decided to try our luck. We could easily have joined the queue for the Neil Gaiman signing after Patrick Ness, but instead we made our way to C Venues on Chambers Street and waited for 6pm, when tickets would go on sale. I queued up at the box office in person while M tried his luck over the phone, and we made it! Only twenty tickets were released altogether, and we got two. Part of me still can’t quite believe this happened.


Neil Gaiman signing at the Edinburgh Book Festival
Before I go any further, I feel like I should give you a little bit of context. Most readers of this blog will know that Neil Gaiman is my absolute favourite author, but there’s really more to it than that. I was in my late teens when I started following his blog; and having grown up in Portugal before the Harry Potter-fuelled boom in fantasy translations, I had limited knowledge of or access to fantasy fiction. I’d been raised on a steady diet of Greek myths and fairy tales, and I knew in my bones that I loved these stories – I knew that they were my literary home. But in the days before blogging, before belonging to an Internet community of bookish people, and without access to a local library or The Book Depository’s free shipping, it was very difficult for me to find more of the kinds of books I wanted to read.

It was in this context that Neil Gaiman’s blog opened up entire worlds for me. I can trace so many of my favourite things back to him. I can even trace this blog in a way – he introduced me to the Endicott Studio, where I saw a post about Carl’s Once Upon a Time Challenge, which I started blogging in order to join. And thanks to that I went on to meet people who also changed my life in other ways. Silly though this might sound, Neil’s web presence over the past decade was a huge force in making me the person I am today. I feel like his blog played a role in raising me, and that’s as much a part of what he means to me as is the fact that I love his books.

All this to say that getting tickets to this tiny reading meant the world to me. The event took place at the Belt Up Theatre’s Fringe headquarters at C Venues (I’ll have much more to say about them when I do my post on the Fringe); a small, intimate and semi-dark room with sofas and cushions on the floor where an amazed audience sat in the small hours of the morning and listened to songs, poems and stories. I’m not sure if I can do justice to the mood of the reading – it felt dreamlike, surreal, personal, and incredibly special. I’m sure I’m not the only person who was in absolute awe. There’s something about sitting in what feels like someone’s parlour and watching your favourite author and two amazing musicians step out of a closet that can’t really be accurately described.


Belt Up's Penthouse
I only took three pictures the whole night – they’re not great, but I do think they capture the mood of the place pretty well. We were allowed to take pictures and even film, but it felt a little wrong to do so, like it would somehow break the spell. Also, the reading felt like something somewhere between a private and a public affair; like we were being shown things that wouldn’t normally be shared with an audience. Plus some of what was shared with us was unpublished material, so it wouldn’t feel right to put it up online. I do wish I had a video to remember it better, but I don’t regret just sitting back and enjoying it.

The evening started with Jason Webley playing Last Song on the accordion. Then Amanda Palmer did Delilah on the mandolin – this is my second favourite Dresden Dolls song (after The Jeep Song) and it was just brilliant; I could kiss the person who requested it. Then Neil read his poem “Instructions” and I very nearly cried. Good thing it wasn’t “Locks”, or there would have been no nearly about it.


Instructions
There were a few more songs (including 8in8’s “The Problem with Saints”, which I had the pleasure of hearing Neil sing three times over the week; and Amanda doing a cover of “Friday” – I kid you not); poems and short stories by Neil performed by the Belt Up Theatre’s excellent actors; a poem by Neil about the night before his wedding; a poem by Amanda; and finally the highlight of the night: Neil Gaiman reading the whole of his award-winning story “The Thing About Cassandra”, from the anthology Songs of Love & Death.

I had not read this story before, which I’m glad for, as it made the whole experience even better. It was close to 3 a.m. by then, which meant I had been up for about twenty-two hours. My day started when I woke up at dawn to travel to Edinburgh; I then walked around the city all day, and I was incredibly anxious about whether or not I’d get tickets until 6pm. I had an exhausting and emotionally turbulent day, and almost fell asleep during the intermission. The reason why I’m telling you all this is so you’ll understand how much it means when I say that the story had me absolutely enthralled. It helps that Neil is such a talented reader, of course, but it was also the story itself. I can’t say much without spoiling it, but I’ll say that I loved the twist. Not just for the surprise factor, but also for what it adds to its overall meaning.


Amanda reading her poem with Jason Webley accompanying her on the accordion.
At the end of the event several people stuck around for a little while to thank Neil, Amanda and Jason Webley for an unforgettable evening. We were in a circle around Neil, and the girl beside me (who was also the girl beside me at the Patrick Ness signing queue – obviously she has great taste) and I were kind of hesitating and telling each other to go talk to him first. Neil saw this, so he came up to us, shook our hands, and thanked us for coming. At this point I was both exhausted and completely dazed, so all I did was mumble awkwardly at him about how he was my favourite author, how much it meant to me to be there, and how thankful I was for all the stories he’s given us over the years.

And then he thanked me and said it was lovely to be someone’s favourite author. He was incredibly warm and kind, as he always is. I ran into him several times during the week, and he always seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of happiness. Everywhere I’d see people go up to him and then come away bouncing and with huge grins on their faces. He’s always so kind to his fans, and never forgets to treat them as human beings. I knew this already, of course, but it was even more striking in person. In addition to everything else, this is a huge part of why I love him.

I know this post is already ridiculously long, but I might as well try your patience for a little longer and tell you about the other times I met Neil Gaiman. As some of you know, earlier this year I’ve had the occasion to reflect on the whole meeting people you admire thing when I met my favourite musician, and what I said then still stands now. Still, all these small interactions meant the world to me – from mumbling awkwardly at him that first time, to saying “Hi Neil” and having him smile at me at Jason Webley’s show at the Forest Café, to finally giving him a hug at the end of Amanda Palmer’s show at the HMV picture house (very out of character for me, but oh well!).


Jason Webley and Neil Gaiman at the Forest Café. Amazing show, btw.



Why yes, this time you can haz video. I love how you can hear Amanda singing from the side of the stage.
Both Neil and Amanda were signing at the end of her very fun show on Thursday. I got my copies of Amanda’s Radiohead EP and of The Graveyard Book signed, and most importantly of all I got to thank Neil for all the amazing things he’s introduced me to over the years.


Wheeee!

WHEEEEE!
I specifically thanked him for recommending the Belt Up’s The Boy James (on which more soon) and books like Tender Morsels and Fire & Hemlock, but I also meant Diana Wynne Jones in general, Ursula Le Guin, Martin Millar, The Magnetic Fields, Hayao Miyazaki, Pan’s Labyrinth, Babylon 5… I lose track. As I was saying earlier, he was the source of many of the things that have become a huge part of who I am, and both that and his own stories mean more to me than I can say.

And then I left the venue and there was this, which was the cherry on top:



Thank you, Neil. For everything.

Read More......

To Edinburgh!

I’m off to Edinburgh early tomorrow for five days of Fringe Festival, Book Festival, and live music. Part of my feels guilty for taking a break for my dissertation for so long; but then again, at this point a break is kind of essential if I want to survive the final stretch. I haven’t left the house to do anything other than go to the library or shop for groceries in weeks, so a holiday is definitely in order. It’s probably very telling that one of the things I’m looking forward to the most is not using a computer mouse for five days and thus give my poor wrist a chance to recover.

I’m very excited to go back to Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities, and also about all the events I’m planning to attend. I was disappointed to hear that China Miéville cancelled his festival appearance a few days ago, but there’s still Patrick Ness, Shaun Tan, Kate de Goldi, Morris Gleitzman and etc. to look forward to. I promise a full report when I return, of course. Have a great week, everyone!

PS: And if anyone has any last minute recommendations of events, places to go, or things to see in Edinburgh, I’m all ears!

Read More......

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men tells the story of George and Lennie, two itinerant farm hands who find work in a ranch in the Salinas Valey, California. But due to a misunderstanding among the ranch’s inhabitants, George and Lennie’s “best laid schemes” do indeed go awry in a tragic finale.

I’m afraid it’s impossible to say more about the plot of Of Mice and Men without giving it all away. It’s probably safe to assume, though, that most readers will know beforehand that this is a book where Something Very Bad happens. I hadn’t read an ending this sad since Ethan Frome last year – I didn’t think there was anything out there that gave Ethan Frome a run for its money, but I was proven wrong. But even though both novellas are relentlessly dark and tragic, they’re actually completely different in tone. Wharton’s is stark; Steinbeck’s is filled with tenderness. So much so that he has been accused of sentimentality, which I don’t think is something anyone would ever dream of saying of Wharton.

I did not find Of Mice and Men sentimental; I found it moving, haunting, masterfully written, complex, and open to several readings. Many of these I’m happy with; others not so much. But this is not of course at all a bad thing – ambiguity, multiple interpretations and numerous narrative strands in tension with each other are to me the hallmarks of great fiction.

The introduction to my edition, written by Susan Shillinglaw, notes that Steinbeck’s detached description of events in Of Mice and Men was part of a deliberate strategy; a nonjudgemental and compassionate approach that simply highlighted “Something That Happened”. Steinbeck called this strategy “is thinking”, and what I found particularly interesting was the extent to which this does not go hand in hand with a real lack of positioning on his part. The narrator does indeed refrain from commenting overtly on events, but Of Mice and Men is of course extremely politically charged. The way this “thing that happened” is framed by the overall narrative speaks volumes. I was somewhat reminded of Pearl S. Buck, who uses a similar approach in The Good Earth.

I also thought it was interesting to consider Culey’s wife from this perspective. Culey’s wife, who’s significantly never named in the story, is dealt with and discussed with horrible misogyny by the other characters. George, for example, uses the odious term “jail bait” in reference to her. But eventually she’s given a voice, and this considerably changes how her character is handled by the narrative as a whole. When we hear her story, we see her as one of the excluded, the powerless and the disenfranchised, even if the other characters don’t. This particular scene is just one more among the things that happen, yet it changes everything. There’s no need for any overt commentary from the narrator for this to happen.

Of course, you could point you that Steinbeck himself said he didn’t name Culey’s wife because “she’s not a person, she’s a symbol”, but I’ll carry on cheerfully refusing to be limited by authorial intent. There’s certainly room in the text for dehumanising interpretations (case in point: Important Critics have gleefully described her as “a harlot” or “a nymphomaniac” throughout the decades), but the fact that these conversations are at all possible is a huge part of why I read.

Shillinglaw also makes reference to a critical essay by Jean Emery that I got curious enough about to seek out: according to Emery, George and Lennie can be read as a couple occupying traditional gender roles, which gives the ending and the decision-making power one party exclusively holds some sinister implications. Emery’s reading made me consider other possible uncomfortable avenues of thought that go beyond gender; for example someone who “knows best” making momentous decisions on behalf of a disabled person, no matter how benevolently. However, there are a lot of valid counterpoints that could be made here concerning George and Lennie’s circumstances; their powerlessness in a wider context versus power or the lack thereof in their friendship; the Great Depression and the meaning of their dreamed future; the seeming inevitability of the ending; the fate that would befall them if not for George’s choice, etc. It’s exactly this ambiguity that gives the book much of its power.

I could go on for hours. One of the most fun things about Of Mice and Men is that despite its brevity, it’s a book you can really sink your teeth into. I have not yet read The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, but after this I certainly will.

This post was written for the always wonderful Classics Circuit, where the rest of the month will be dedicated to Steinbeck. I apologise for being so late – the reason is that I somehow managed to lose an almost completed draft earlier today. And of course I can’t help but think the earlier version of the post came together much better than this one. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

They read it too: Your Move, Dickens, Becky’s Book Reviews, Rebecca Reads, Caribou’s Mom, Bibliophile by the Sea, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

(You?)

---

On an unrelated note, James at The Book Base was kind enough to invite me to participate in his ongoing series of Q&As with book bloggers. Thanks again for having me, James!

Read More......

There is No Dog by Meg Rosoff

The premise behind There is No Dog is this: our world was created and is overseen by a nineteen-year-old named Bob, whose occupation of the job of God has less to do with his abilities and more to do with his mother winning the position during one night of drunken poker and then passing it on to him. Bob is not exactly what you’d think of a deity material: He’s lazy, self-centred, irresponsible, and mainly concerned with getting what he wants. And what he wants at the moment is to win the affection of a human girl named Lucy. But as Bob’s long-suffering assistant, Mr B, very well knows, a quick glance at history will show us that Bob’s passions tend to end in disaster. Who knows what will befall our already considerably messy planet this time around?

First of all, I have to confess that I was a tiny little bit wary of the premise of There is No Dog. There are, after all, about a million different ways in which a story starring God as a teenaged boy and offering this as the reason for all that’s wrong with the world could go wrong in the hands of a clumsy author. But! This is Meg Rosoff. She’s one of the entries on my brief “I would walk through embers for your new book” list and I trust her implicitly. So I knew she wouldn’t explore this premise in an obvious, “isn’t-everything-unredeemingly-awful” sort of way – yet There is No Dog still surprised me for being funnier, smarter, and more moving than you’d think it had any right to be.

First of all, you have a cast of intergalactic characters whose personalities, relationships and going-ons reminded me slightly of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (in fact, I’d highly recommend this to fans of Douglas Adams, and also of Kurt Vonnegut). Then you have the humour, which is dark and understated and absolutely pitch-perfect. Then you have satire with real heart: There is No Dog pokes fun at plenty of things, but it never handles any of them clumsily. This is particularly visible in Bob and Lucy’s love affair. I loved the slightly ridiculous but nevertheless intense tone of the whole thing. I loved the physicality of it all, and the acknowledgement that despite all the drama, this kind of desire feels quite overwhelming for those caught up in it. I especially liked that this was as true of Lucy as it is of Bob – rather than being merely an object of desire, she’s a subject. And last but not least, I loved seeing teenage lust portrayed in a way that doesn’t involve a disregard for consent, or the usual casting of the male character as the bearer of uncontrollable lust and the female one as responsible for guarding her chastity.

There is No Dog has no shortage of interesting characters. I loved Lucy, who’s both a beautiful girl and an actual real human being, and who’s well aware of just how often she’s perceived as just a beautiful girl. I loved Mr B, the quietly competent manager who has devoted the millennia to cleaning up after Bob. I loved Estelle, a smart, competent and compassionate goddess who’s determined not to let the worst happen. And I loved Bernard, a vicar doing his best, and who one day, unbeknownst to him, has a conversation with the real God. Again, this is a scene that could easily have gone wrong, but in Meg Rosoff’s hands it became one of the best parts of the book.

The character I loved the most, though, was the Eck. The Eck is the very last member of a species of penguiny creatures with a voracious aptitude and, rumour has it, the most delicious meat in nine galaxies. The last titbit is of course his downfall: the Eck is Bob’s pet, and the same kind of drunken poker that won Bob the job leads Bob’s mother to wager him away to someone intent on trying this delicacy. The Eck’s story is wonderful, absurd, funny, and nevertheless truly moving. He spends most of the book terrified about his impeding doom, and yet still manages to occasionally put his fear aside to make new friends, enjoy his abundant meals, and take real pleasure in his brief life. I don’t know how Meg Rosoff managed to do this without slipping into heavy-handedness, but somehow she did: in a story that deals with what it means to be human, to be mortal, and to live in a world where the worst can and often does happen, the Eck is just like us. No wonder he’s at the very heart of the book.

What I liked the most about There Is No Dog was the fact that it combines an awareness of all that’s wrong with our planet with a refusal to descend into cynicism for cynicism’s sake. For all its darkness, biting satire and strangeness, There Is No Dog is filled with hope. Among the apocalyptic weather there are sunny days. In between the despair there are real moments of beauty. And there are characters who neither despair nor slip into complacency. They simply carry on doing the best they can. Perhaps that’s not enough, but it’s all we’ve got.

They read it too: books i done read, The Diary of a Bookworm, Bookwitch, Reeder Reads, Bella’s Bookshelves, Dreaming of Books

(You?)

Read More......

Books and Riots: “We’ll stay open, if they steal some books they might learn something”

Torched Salford City Council library stock. Photo Credit.

The above quote allegedly came from a Waterstone’s employee during last night’s riots in Manchester. The phrase seems to have entered the realm of urban legend to some degree, in the sense that its exact source varies from account to account, but what is interesting to me is the extent to which it clearly resonates with people. I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen it retweeted or reblogged on tumblr since yesterday evening. Unfortunately, each of those times has only added to my vague sense of discomfort and concern with what exactly is being said here.

First of all, I wanted to say that I’m going to pass on commenting on the riots as a whole, mostly because there are times when it’s a better to shut up and listen rather than join the race to be among the first to have opinions or offer insightful commentary. The latter is completely beyond my abilities – I simply don’t know enough about what’s going on here to say anything of use, so instead I’ve been reading different perspectives and thinking and trying to understand. The term “understand” can be misconstrued in this context, so let me clarify: it is not a synonym to “excuse”. As this very smart nerdfighter and vlogger put it, everyone begins these conversations with an attempt to distance themselves from the acts of looting and starting fires. We shouldn’t have to do that, but we do it anyway because we’re so worried that acknowledging that nothing happens in a vacuum will be confused with sympathising with horrible actions that hurt real human beings. However, as the two are not one and the same it shouldn’t be necessary to take this disclaimer any further.

I will now return to the opening quote, which is supposed to be what this post is really about: first of all, it can be read as humour in the face of adversity, which is a very human and very understandable reaction. I think it was in this spirit that many people retweeted and reblogged it since last night, and goodness knows I needed some humour myself as I saw images of my everyday streets turned into a warzone. All the same, I’ve always believed that something being a joke doesn’t mean we can’t analyse it or think about its implication, so that is what I’ll try to do here.

The quote is an acknowledgement that there’s a huge disconnect between literacy and education and antisocial acts such as looting. This is sad but true, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing it out. However – and this is where I start to worry – it’s simultaneously an acknowledgement that reading is often a marker of class distinctions. The speaker realises that a bookshop is not the sort of place that will be looted because the looters are not “our” kind of people – the kind of people who read. If they did loot it, well, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe books would be a ticket to the other side. Again, there are multiple ways in which these ideas can be read: one is as an expression of faith in the power of literacy and education, which I’m obviously all for. Another is as a rather less idealistic expression of contempt. It’s telling someone to get an education because you know they won’t. It’s holding up books as a symbol of something that is both desirable and completely beyond their reach.

This worries me as someone who cares about books, and it especially worries me as a future literacy professional. It worries me because I have spent the past year considering the many ways in which spreading literacy is not easy. Unfortunately, simply throwing books at people – or jokingly inviting them to loot them – is not enough. Initiatives like World Book Night are wonderful, but as many of the people involved this year reported, there’s a real danger that you’ll end up preaching to the choir. Obviously making books widely available is a first step without which nothing else can follow. Expose people to books, to literacy, to education, by all means. But then what? How do you keep them from deciding none of that is for them and walking away?

The quote worries me because although it’s an accurate reflection of reality, it also reinforces the already troubling strong association between books and the middle class. It reinforces the idea that books are not for “us” (if you’re “them”), they are for “them” (which is “us”). If “they” adopted our habits, none of this would ever happen. Which is not necessarily untrue - and yet.

This touches on several hugely complicated ideas that I can’t pretend to fully understand. I can’t pretend to understand working class culture, the exact socioeconomic environment these kids come from, or the mentality behind looting. But I do know this: we need to remove perceived barriers to literacy. We need to quit holding up books as a marker of status while still highlighting the clear educational advantages of literacy. I honestly believe with all my heart that reading is good for people. I wouldn’t have gone to library school during an economic recession, which means I’m likely to end up jobless and in debt for years to come, if I didn’t strongly believe it. But I also know there are effective and ineffective ways to sell the idea that reading is good, and I worry about where exactly on that spectrum the above quote falls.

In a 2008 research report called “Reading: The Future”(PDF link) , Andrew Thomson wrote:

In these groups of families, the world of books is seen as unwelcoming to the outsider. Books are associated with hard work in school, seen as unattractive unopened objects – and to an extent anti-social. Reading (and this not just a point about books) is an individual activity, in the main. These are families who like to relax and share their leisure time as a unit. It is not that they do not aspire to a more privileged world of reading. It is more that they see reading as for people ‘who don’t know how to live’; they do not aspire to be like them. It is not surprising that libraries and book stores do not feature strongly in the lives of these families. This attitude to reading is a challenge. But a bigger challenge is the one that confronts the person who decides they do want to read a book – when they enter a book store or library for the first time.

Selecting a book is a major obstacle faced by people in the ‘HarperCollins’ research. These are not families with literacy difficulties: they just do not read much. The codes and references that set out where books are to be found and that define their contents are off-putting to those who do not use book stores and libraries regularly. (In the survey, the shop most visited was one of the most accessible on the high street, WHSmith). For some in the survey, entering a bookstore is like entering a party where you don’t know anybody. It’s acutely anxiety-inducing. Book stores and libraries are a lot more user-friendly than was once the case, but there are still major opportunities to think further about engaging more readers by understanding the perspectives, interests and outlooks of those not currently browsing their shelves. The same must be true of publishers themselves, exploring new ways of presenting reading to expand the market.

This seems to me a fairly accurate representation of the mindset that might lead someone to think nothing of setting a warehouse where a city council stores library stock on fire. It doesn’t lessen the indignation many people feel when confronted with something like this, and I’m not saying that it should. It doesn’t mean we have to like people with this mindset – I know I probably wouldn’t. But it’s nevertheless something that gives me pause.

Last but not least, let me say again that I understand that people are distraught and angry and in need of verbal outlets. I have many friends in London, and since Saturday I have feared for them. When the riots spread to Manchester last night, I feared not so much for myself (I am lucky enough to live in an unaffected area, which, again, is not entirely coincidental), but for a place I’ve grown to love in the past eleven months. I’m horrified that people lost their homes or businesses, that library books were burned, that the PIAS warehouse fire might put indie music labels out of business.

And yes, I do believe that a world where more people read (and had access to all that reading currently implies) would be a world where things like this would be less likely to happen. But how do we bring about such a world without reinforcing the idea that books are for “us”, and “they” will never be one of “us”?

ETA: Similar points, but far better worded, from Nikesh Shukla.

Read More......

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker takes place in a futuristic world that has barely survived an environmental disaster of major proportions. The sea levels have risen, and in the Gulf Coast most major cities are now submerged. People in small seaside communities like Bright Sands Beach, the community Nailer Lopez belongs to, survive by doing whatever they can. Nailer is a ship breaker, which means he risks his life scavenging copper wire from wrecked ships and oil containers. He knows he won’t be small enough to do this job for much longer, but having grown up with malnutrition he won’t ever be big enough to work heavy crew. And those without a crew or a means of subsistence face starvation.

After a hurricane almost destroys everything they know, Nailer and his friend Pima come across a wrecked luxury ship filled with valuable goods. If they can claim the loot for themselves, this is it – the “lucky strike” that will make them rich (the term being defined, as the story later shows us, within a very specific context). But inside the ship there’s a survivor – a privileged girl who belongs to a world Nailer and Pima can barely imagine. And she needs their help.

I read Ship Breaker at around the same time as several blogging friends, so we decided to review it together by asking each other questions. In the end the book didn’t work for most of them, and Kelly and I are the main “survivors”. But with everyone’s permission, we’re using their questions anyway:

Heather: Since I already know some things about this book bothered Chris, I want to know all about it. What bothered you about this novel?

Nothing at all! I really loved it. Well, I guess at first I was a little frustrated when I finished it, mostly because it felt so short. The world Paolo Bacigalupi evokes is so well built, so rich and interesting, that I wanted more from it. And I use the term “evoke” because Bacigalupi doesn’t devote a lot of time to describing it – he sets his premise and then moves on to exploring the everyday details of living in such conditions.

I wanted to know what happened next – not necessarily to the main characters, but to all of humanity under these circumstances. The dystopian elements of Ship Breaker are of the kind I favour, and also of the kind I find the most terrifying: they feel possible. They’re the kind of thing we could realistically face in our lifetimes. As scary as that is, it’s also something I want to explore intellectually, so of course I wanted more stories set in this world.

So yeah, my only frustration with this book was the very best kind of readerly frustration possible: it means the author has done his job right. Also, it turns out that Bacigalupi is working on a companion novel set in the world of Ship Breaker, so there will be more. Hooray!

Debi: It’s weird. I spent forever trying to figure out why I didn’t like this book more than I did. (And I’m not saying I didn’t like it—I just expected to like it more than I actually did.) Then Ana wrote a post about not connecting emotionally with books, and it hit me that that was really what was at the root of my disappointment with this book—I didn’t really connect on an emotional level. Did you all?

I think I connected with it more on an intellectual level, but I honestly think that has more to do with the phase I’m going through right now than with the book itself. And by this I don’t mean I had no emotional investment in the story – as I’ll explore in more detail in my next answer, I grew to really care about the characters. All the same, the mostly intellectual reading experience felt right, because despite being fast-paced Ship Breaker is a very cerebral sort of book. It deals with economics, sociology, environmental issues, the impact of global commerce, the power of major corporations, social inequalities and injustice, and the power dynamics and hierarchies all these produced even among the underprivileged. It kind of reminded me of Cory Doctorow’s work, which as you might remember I love.

Kelly: What did you think of the characters? Do you think they were written believably? Were there any that you loved? Hated?

Yes! I loved the characterisation. Everyone – from Nailer and Pima to Nita, the girl they rescue; from Nailer’s terrifying father to Tool, a genetically engineered “half-man” who takes his fate into his own hands – was not only believable but also complex. Bacigalupi’s characterisation is subtle, dark, and daring: he has a very clear understanding of how circumstances shape people’s personalities and ethics codes, but never crosses the line into determinism. My own question touches on this, so I’ll keep this point brief here, but it was wonderful to see the characters struggle with their circumstances in a way that didn’t deny their agency.

Also, as I said previously, I grew to really care about the main characters. Nailer, Pima and Nita all consider, at one point or another, doing extremely unpleasant things that would normally render a character unsympathetic. But these situations seamlessly show the major themes of Ship Breaker at work: Bacigalupi doesn’t do anything for shock value, and he never fails to account for why his characters waver. Readers can clearly see their investment in one choice versus the other; they can see what each course of action might mean to them. So although we continuously hope against the worst, we never doubt their humanity.

Chris: Comments on race and gender issues in the book? What did you like? What didn’t you like?

Bacigalupi did a wonderful job of diversifying his cast. Characters from different backgrounds and ethnicities: check. Girls and women actually doing things: check. I loved the fact that he acknowledges that the traditional association between gender and hard labour or physical frailty is actually class-driven: in a world like the one these characters inhabit, women like Pima and her mother, who work side by side with men and have developed the muscles to do it, would of course be more of a rule than an exception. Nita, on the other hand, grew up on a sheltered world of luxury, but when necessity drives her she’s anything but incapable.

Me: One of the things that interested me the most about the book was the tension between, on the one hand, the idea of taking your life into your hands and making your own destiny, and, on the other hand, dealing with a very difficult reality full of inequalities and different opportunities for people born in different circumstances. Thoughts and comments on this?

Considering that this is my own question, you probably won’t be surprised to hear I have a lot to say on the subject, or that this was the angle of Ship Breaker that interested me the most. A few weeks after I finished the book I came across a Marx quote in Gary Younge’s Who Are We that sumps up what I mean fairly well:

[Humans] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under given circumstances directly encountered and inherited from the past.

In Ship Breaker, the characters often allude to the Fates, the random or luck element of a world that they feel is beyond their control. Everyone is Nailer’s community believes in Fates, and with good reason – these are people on the very brink of survival; people who can’t explain their misfortune or do much to influence their circumstances. But Nailer thinks that Fates is not all it takes: you also need smarts. You need the ability to seize the chances that come to your way. You need both the right moment and the ability to make the right decision when that moment comes.

Ship Breaker repeatedly makes the point that biology is not destiny. Class is not destiny. Blood is not destiny. Even genetic engineering is not destiny. Nobody is born into an inescapable mould. However, Bacigalupi is far too intelligent and subtle a writer to turn this into wide-eyed “believe in yourself and you can be anything!” idealism. The evidence of the cruelty of circumstances, of the unfair randomness of life, is all over Ship Breaker. But within those limitations the characters are far from helpless or passive. They pick their own allegiances, their own priorities, their own families, and the weapons they are and aren’t willing to use in their own struggle for survival.

Ship Breaker combines fast-paced action, a realistic dystopian setting, excellent characterisation, and complex ideas about social justice, power, privilege and responsibility. No wonder it won the Printz Award.

Other points of view:
Rhapsody in Books, Book Gazing, Presenting Lenore, It’s All About Books, The Book Smugglers, Becky’s Book Reviews, Bart’s Bookshelf

(Yours?)

Read More......

The Sunday Salon: Life & Reading News

Good morning, Sunday Saloners. As you might have noticed, things remain very slow on the blogging front around these parts¹. In truth this isn’t as much a result of lack of time (taking an hour off from my thesis to blog is probably a health and safety measure at this point) as it is a result of my prolonged reading slump. I tried several of your recommendations from a few weeks ago, but while some (such as Hugo Cabret) where a complete success, others I ended up putting down. It’s not that they were bad books – quite the contrary. It’s that I could tell they were good books and still I couldn’t get into them, which made me decide I had better save them for a more appropriate time.

Another thing that’s been happening lately is this: I’ll read something, wait a few days before I attempt to write about it, and then realise that I can’t because nothing whatsoever about the book has stayed with me. Gifted by Nikita Lalwani, Emiko Superstar by Mariko Tamaki, the Once/Then/Now trilogy by Morris Gleitzman… it’s not that they were shallow or failed to be enjoyable, but at this particular moment in time they were, to use Jenny’s analogy, skipping stones that disappeared under the waters remarkably fast.

I know this is only natural considering how exhausted and overwhelmed I am, and that it happens to us all every now and then. But the reason why it worries me is because I often notice that it’s the process of writing about a book that really makes it stick with me. So if I give up before I start, where will that leave me? Blogging forces me to dig deeper, to give what I read more thought, to consider new angles, to transform vague impressions into intelligible thoughts. Whenever I have those pesky maybe-there-is-no-room-in-my-life-for-blogging-anymore thoughts, I remember this: all the other things I’d miss about blogging aside, I know I’ll stick around because it makes me a better reader.

To end this post on a more cheerful note, I thought I’d share some photos of the highlights of my life for the past month or so. Apologies to my tumblr friends, who will have seen many of these pictures before. I’ll start with photos of my trip to Buxton last Friday to see The Globe’s touring production of Hamlet. I had an absolutely wonderful time: despite a cloudy morning, the sun shone in the afternoon, so I got to wander around the Pavilion Gardens, sit in the sunshine, and appreciate the town’s stunning late Victorian/Edwardian architecture. Buxton would be the perfect setting for a steampunk festival of some sort: the lovely Edwardian tearooms, the market arcades, the gorgeous Opera house, the pavilion that gives the gardens their name, the turn of the century hotels and spa buildings… it’s all so right that I desperately wish someone would make it happen.

As for the play itself, it was my first time seeing Hamlet on stage, so naturally I was very excited. I’d seen the Kenneth Branagh film before, but it wouldn’t be right to compare the two. Possibly because it’s an outdoors summer production, this Hamlet was considerable less solemn, and it highlighted the dark humour and the less pleasant aspects of the prince’s character more than his noble tragic hero streak. To call it a moody teenage Hamlet may sound dismissive to some, but that’s absolutely not how I mean it. I found this interpretation of Hamlet moving exactly because of how the prince comes across as young, earnest, and at times unreasonable and stubborn.

Here are the promised pictures:




I love this place


Mmm, cream tea.




Sunshine, a picnic and Shakespeare: this is what summer is all about.


The play about to start


A visit to the real Globe in early July, where I saw Much Ado About Nothing with Jodie, Meghan and Ana.


At Manchester Comic Con last weekend. My first ever convention!


...and where my childhood dream of meeting the Ghostbusters was fulfilled.





A walk along the canals.

Have a great Sunday everyone. Things might remain a little quiet around these parts for a little longer, but in the meantime, thank you so much for sticking around.

¹ And on the commenting front, unfortunately. I’m still here reading and I really miss interacting with everyone more regularly. But after entire days working at the computer, I’m left with sore wrists and little energy for anything at all.

Read More......

Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge

Fly By Night is the story of twelve-year-old Mosca Mye, an orphan from the small town of Chough who decides to take off with con-man Eponymous Clent because he has, as she puts it, “a way with words”. And words mean the world to Mosca: unlike most people in her world she is literate, and she craves the words and stories she hasn’t been able to access since her father’s death.

The setting of Fly By Night is as important as its characters: the story takes place in an alternate version of the eighteenth century; in a world where a long-lasting interregnum has led to a “fractured realm” of city-states precariously controlled by rivalling guilds: the Company of Stationers, printers and book-binders who control the written word; the Company of Locksmiths, against whom no door can be locked; and the Company of Watermen, who control the rivers and those who travel through them.

The setting of Fly By Night is a dark, politically intricate world constantly on the brink of a return to the civil war, religious intolerance and tyranny it has only recently emerged from. Mosca and Clent make their way to Mandelion, the capital of the realm. There they find themselves involved in a conspiracy that might forever compromise all the peace they’ve ever known.

Alex convinced me to finally pick up Fly By Night by saying it was everything Inkheart didn’t quite manage to be. As someone who also found Inkheart disappointing, I longed for a book that had a similar premise and took it further. While I wouldn’t perhaps have thought of comparing the two novels myself, I can see what Alex means. But there’s a crucial difference in how the these works approach the theme of books and their power: while Funke’s protagonist Meggie has a passion for fiction that most booklovers will be able to relate to, Mosca’s case is entirely different. Mosca is an intelligent child who has been starved for words in a way that is outside my experience as an educated inhabitant of the 21st century, and which I found extremely interesting to read about. The following passage will show you what I mean (as well as give you a good idea of Mosca as a character):

‘But in the name of the most holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?’
Because I’d been hoarding words for years, buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly on to bits of bark so I wouldn’t forget them, and then he turned up using words like ‘epiphany’ and ‘amaranth’. Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn’t since they burned my father’s books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers…
Mosca shrugged.
‘He’s got a way with words.’

Mosca’s love of language and her awareness of the new possibilities of thought that new words afford her permeate the whole novel. This is a serious theme, and Frances Hardinge treats it accordingly. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of room for humour in Fly By Night. Take, for example, this description of Mosca and Clent’s insults war:

Mosca’s opening offer was a number of cant words she had heard peddlers use, words for the drool hanging from a dog’s jaw, words for the greenish sheen on a mouldering strip of bacon.
Eponymous Clent responded with some choice descriptions of ungrateful and treacherous women culled from ballad and classic myth.
Mosca countered with some from her secret hoard of hidden words, the terms used by smugglers for tell-alls, and soldiers’ words for the worst kind of keyhole-stooping spy.
Clent answered with crushing and high-sounding examples from the best essays on the natural depravity of unguided youth.

How could I fail to fall in love with a book with passages like this?

Though I only realised this a few days after I put the book down, Fly By Night really reminded me of Terry Pratchett: the humour and the way it goes hand in hand with depth, the political and philosophical implications of the plot, the complexity of the world, the allusions to history, and even something about the characterisation sometimes: Saracen, Mosca’s beloved murderous goose, would fit right in in Discworld. However, none of this means I found Frances Hardinge unoriginal – her world, her language and her characters are entirely her own. I only mean she shares one of my favourite author’s strengths, and that is a Very Good Thing.

Fly By Night reads a little like a mystery: it’s full of twists and turns, murder and mayhem, surprises and changing allegiances. It also reads like a coming-of-age story: the story of a bright child starved for stimuli whose sense of justice and truth are put to test by the dark and complicated world she finds herself in.

I’ll certainly be reading more of Frances Hardinge’s work. Thank you Alex for the lovely recommendation.

Bits I liked:

Clent was right, and Mosca knew it. Words were dangerous when loosed. They were more powerful than cannon and more unpredictable than storms. They could turn men’s heads inside out and warp their destines. They could pick up kingdoms and shake them until they rattled. And this was a good ting, a wonderful thing… and in her heart Mosca was sure Clent knew this too.

And this just cracked me up:

‘I find it hard to believe that a lady like…’ Pertellis hesitated, and coughed. ‘There is something elevated in the female spirit that will always hold a woman back from the coldest and most vicious forms of villainy.’
‘No, there isn’t,’ Miss Kitely said kindly but firmly as she set a dish in his hand. ‘Drink your chocolate, Mr Pertellis.’

They read it too:
The Sleepless Reader, Once Upon a Bookshelf, Bookshelves of Doom, Miss Erin, Random Musings of a Bibliophile

(You?)

Read More......