Books in Flight

I have been directly affected by the UK ban on electronics arriving on flights from selected airports. I was ready for my holiday to Istanbul, having only recently been more open to reading on a Kindle, A Little Life loaded smugly onto my light weight e-reader complete with portable power pack and cable.

Leaving the UK is no problem, laptops, tablets, all manner of decadent electronics are allowed to fly through the air without alarm. My flight back to the UK was delayed for an hour as the land crew painstakingly searched and assessed every single bag. Mine was scanned twice for an electric toothbrush. Infuriatingly the delay was not the caused by the passengers, I arrived an hour before boarding and got through to the plane at 8:55. The scheduled take off time was 9am but looking at the queue there was no way we were leaving soon. 

Although news articles and websites were clear about tablets and laptops it was not until the morning of my flight that I received notification that portable battery packs (and hard drives by the way) above a certain size were not allowed in hand luggage OR in checked luggage. I put mine in the hold and didn't mention it. But several passengers had their batteries taken away. Where? Into a red cooler bag that the steward carried to the back of the plane cabin. So it's still in the cabin, not in the hold, and sitting next to a bunch of other electronics and batteries likely to blow. 

Aside from the general frustration at this inane attempt by the government to look like it is making an effort to stop terrorist attacks, which makes no technological sense at all, the difference on the flight was noticeable. I clearly think it is a pointless and unhelpful security measure, but I loved the reappearance of books, newspapers and magazines on the flight. More people slept on the flight than working, which probably made them happier on the other end. Although many people turned to their phones to play games, or detonate a device hidden in hold luggage (which is only scanned once and with no question about your destination), several people pulled out books. 

I'm not suggesting that some people don't always carry a book on a plane anyway, but without kindles I could see what everyone was reading, what language they were reading in, and how far they have got left to read. I loved it and used half an hour of the trip just snooping into other peoples book habits. The rest was powering through my current book while half listening to the family of five behind me reading a children's book together. 

I still sneer at the restrictions, but welcome back books!

Book of the Year

As is tradition, every year in May I tot up how many books I've read and more importantly how many I've read since the start of this blog page. It makes it a bit weird to count from May to May, but its a tiny piece of nostalgia that I like to do.

2016
May - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
June - The Old Man & The Sea, Queenie, The Signature of All Things, The Guernsey Literature and Potato Peel Pie Society
July - The Moth, Binge, The Widow, Armada
August - The Man in The High Castle, Eat Pray Love, Leaving Atocha Station
September - Look Who's Back, Queen of Shadows
October - The Box of Delights
November - Blackass
December - Love Letters to the Dead,

2017
January - Captain Corelli's Manolin, Othello, Playing With The Grown Ups
February - Half of a Yellow Sun
March - The Essex Serpent, The Vegetarian, Anil's Ghost
April - The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, A Little Life, The Colour Purple, The Sultan's Organ

Book of the Year May 2016- April 2017 has got to be Love Letters to the Dead.

Love Letters to the Dead
Ava Dellaria
4/5
Hot Key Books 01/05/2014 Paperback
Movellas Haul

This book was perfect to get me out of my depressed, I'm-not-even-reading-right-now, slump. It was aimed at teenagers, so lacks the pretension that might make my head hurt, but has beautiful writing elements that would wake me up to my love of reading and language - something I needed to find again.
As an epistolary novel, the protagonist relates her daily struggles of high school to her heros. They are cleverly chosen, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Eirehart, John Keats; the people that you discover for the first time at that coming of age stage of life. As the story comes out, the people that she writes to the most come to the foreground and reveal something of the character and her friends in what they have in common. For example she only write to Amy Winehouse a few times, and she is inspired to do so because her new friend sings Amy Winehouse music. As it transpires Amy and the best friend have a lot in common, and it speaks to the moulding of the character as well as the protagonist discovering the musician.
It is very clever.

More than anything I will cherish this book because in a world where my depression had leaked into every aspect of my life, colouring even my happy times with darkness and bitterness, I reclaimed reading as mine. People see me as a reader and without books I wasn't myself.

February 2017 Reviews

Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
3/5
Forth Estate 9/03/2017 Paperback
Amazon


In the spirit of reading more broadly and outside of my comfort zone, as well as having read Americhana last year, I picked up Half of a Yellow Sun. I found both of Adichie's books difficult to read, although this one was definitely more difficult to follow. Part of my reasons for reading is because I feel I ought to self educate my self on other cultures. But unlike Americhana, where I felt I was learning and changing my opinions on how things work in Nigeria and the US and London, as well as finding the answers to those ignorant questions I might have asked, I felt completely out of touch with the characters in Half of a Yellow Sun. 

It was a difficult read to pick up, I loved the storyline set in a time of revolution, but I somehow really struggled to connect with its protagonists. Half way through I voiced my scepticism to my Grandmother, who has both read the book, and remembered the forming and dissolving of Biafra. For her it was a touching memory, and captured the atrocities and the feeling of the time. She told me of how Biafran children were promoted for adoptions, and the starvation. Suddenly I had new eyes and finished the book quickly with new appreciation for these people living their lives amongst it all. 

I've called it a 3 out of 5 because of that; "well maybe you had to be there" feeling that I had in the first instance. It is the only book I read in February and it slowed me down. A difficult, but overall a good read. 

Change Your Reading Habits

This may be presumptuous, you might be very happy with your reading at the moment. The genres you read, the authors you target, fiction, non fiction, etc. But I personally have read three articles, just today, totally by accident about reading books by men or women.

Changing your habits depends, I think, entirely on what you want to achieve from reading. It is common among my reading friends, to have a goal to read more classic novels. But without the habit or knack of reading that kind of prose, it can be difficult to keep up your enthusiasm. Especially if you destroy a summer by reading one gloomy Hardy book after another, as I did. Furthermore, regardless of being a classic, you should only read what you would find interesting. If you're not a fan of crime novels, explain why you're reading The Moonstone? You're setting yourself up for failure.

But aside from my view on classics and only reading the ones you might actually enjoy and love, I would encourage alternating. One classic, one modern. Or One classic, one teen fiction. One classic, one manbooker prize. swapping in this way gives your brain a bit of a rest and leaves it ready for your next challenge.

Looking back over the books I've read recently, there are certain habits that I fall into that I think I'd like to change. For example, in the last year I've read just three classics, have a 15:13 split between female (15) and male (13) authors, three non-fiction books, and ten that I bought from Amazon. The majority of the authors I have read here are either American or British, and write in those settings, though I have a few curve balls with two Nigerian authors, a German, an Australian and an Indian. Looking at my habits in this way definitely makes me want to read more classics (Still) and I want to read more from different nationalities, specifically female writers from those other countries.

Look back over the books you've read and consider what your own patterns are. Are you reading male or female authors more? What is the ethnicity of the authors you read, or the characters you read about... In a time where publishers are asking for diverse writers to produce books that will familiarise people with other cultures besides your own, it becomes increasingly important to me to self educate through my reading.

It can be hard to alternate with too many goals, but recognising your own habits can be the first step to expanding your reading. This can even be extended, for example if you love libraries, aiming to borrow from your library would be a good goal. Or keeping bricks and morter book shops on the high street, think about where you source your books. Want to reduce waste? buy second hand. Want to support charities? Buy from charity shops.

What ever you want to get out of your reading, tweaking those habits and ruts we all fall into can be a brilliant way to expand and try out new things.

You are what you read

When I started out writing this blog, I wanted to write a listicle about those favourite bookworm characters from books. As I started my research I found several blogs in a similar vein that had focused on female book loving characters. I wondered how many had set out to write a list of female characters or had retrospectivly changed the title to be only female characters to excuse the fact that it is nigh on impossible to think of central male characters that read.

I got to thinking why this is. "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." that it is difficult to encourage younger boys to read. Girls get books that are aimed at their feminine side, and in recent years there books aimed at younger girls that encourage them to embrace all aspects of their personality and see each element as a strength. Boys on the other hand get a far more heavy handed list of stereotyped stories.

As a female I fondly remember the book smarts of Hermione Granger, Belle's delight in the Beast's extravagant library (I'd love a man if he had a library like that too, girl...), or Matilda's devouring brain, and Elizabeth Bennett's defence of her reading as one of the many pleasures she takes in life.

Of the male characters I could think of that read, it was a secondary character, and they happen to be readers in order to be helpful to the story. Klaus Baudelaire got a couple special mentions in other lists, but his reading is academic more than anything else, which proves useful in some of the characters' more sticky situations. Mr Bennett retreats to his library often, presumably to read, and perhaps this is where Lizzy learnt to love books, at her father's knee. But he is hardly the focus of the story.

Perhaps the author knows that it wants to appeal to its demographic, so it pays to make your readers read themselves in the characters. One way to do that with female characters is to make them readers, or bookish and therefore similar to the reader. But the difficulty apparently comes with male characters. There are plenty of male characters in books but why don't they read?

If we are what we read, as a reader I identify with classic characters that also read for pleasure. I could not think of a single male character that reads for pleasure. I know that men that read for pleasure exist, why are they not represented in the literature they read? Why are male characters depicted as only reading for knowledge, further pushing the idea of reading as nerdy for boys?

If anyone can think of a male character that is similarly enthusiastic about books as Matilda, Belle, Hermione and Elizabeth Bennett, please let me know! In my experience I am yet to come across one.

Bookclubs

I want to take a look at the pros and cons of joining a bookclub, as well as how to find them, why you should find them, and shouldn't... I have previously dissuaded people from joining bookclubs and I want to talk about why. You have to find the bookclub that's right for you.

Pro

Bookclubs can help you up your reading rate because you know you're going to have to finish it before the next book comes up. For people that work to deadlines best, joining a bookclub can give you that feeling. 

Con

The books suggested could result in a book that you don't enjoy. It can feel like you are wasting your time in this case. 

Pro

Read books you might never choose! Who knows what books are on your horizon that you would never pick up normally. Bookclubs are a great way to discover new styles and authors without even trying. 

Con

It takes time. While the idea of discussing books in a library or in a pub after work sounds lovely, realistically the meetings take up time in your week when you could be, Oh I don't know, reading your next book.

Pro

Make new friends and meet people.

Overall, I do think the Pro's have it. It is lovely to be part of a community that reads and Bookclubs are a great way of finding that community. However, in this online world, many bookclubs take the form of online discussions of assigned books each month.

The issue with that for me is that who ever is setting the books will probably have an agenda. If it's coming from a book shop or a TV show, the choice of books is completely determined by the publicity departments of publishing houses. You as a reader get very little say as to what you all read next. In contrast, by joining in with reading books in the Richard and Judy book club, Oprah's or something with Waterstones, you are probably going to be reading the most recent titles, the ones that everyone is talking about.

For many people the attraction is getting out of the house, but as libraries and physical meetings are in decline there's so much more available online. There is something I do not love about the online style of people sharing their ideas by writing what they thought, no one can type fast enough to keep up with an interactive chat!

We have a book club at work where a different person decides the book each month and we meet at lunch time for a drink and a chat about the book. It's brilliant, people bring their own thoughts and questions and we really get to tear things apart, things that others didn't notice etc.

My advice would be to definitely find a bookclub that meets in person and find out what the decision making process for the next book is. 

January 2017 Reviews

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Louis De Bernieres
Vintage 1/6/1991 Paperback
4/5
Work book exchange

The second book I've read from De Bernieres, and the style is definitely unique to him, a slew of characters that can make things hard to follow. Nevertheless, this style in the end makes the reader feel like they know the whole town and that is a clever way of pulling us all in.
It is a brilliant read and very easy to get through, with just enough serious events to make it exciting overall and a huge amount of miniature drama to carry the story through.
There is something disappointing in the ending and as time moves on from the bulk time period of the story. It has that same trouble with if someone is relating a true story, the ending always peters out in a trickle.
Still, the realism of the characters' romantic relationships are my favourite of all, There are obstacles, there are mistakes and there are physical and emotional injuries to survive. Those realistic elements are what I look for in books, and it was pulled off well here.
The book is the favourite of at least three people at work and a copy is slowly making its way around the office at the moment as essential reading for the team.


Othello
William Shakespeare
Heinmann 20/11/2000 Paperback
5/5
Sister's library

There are so many reasons I enjoyed reading this. Part of that joy was because this was a book from my sister's a level days so included some gem marginalia. But as well as the colourful notes with her classmates, who doesn't love a quick Shakespeare?
How did I not know the story of Othello? I really know know why, but I enjoyed finding out from the original without knowing anything of the story beforehand. The characters, as usual for Bill, are all brilliant, even meek little Emila, who I thought wouldn't feature much at all after her white bread introduction to the story. Iago's trickery and double sided language throughout is hilarious, worrying and thought provoking in equal measure.
I would recommend reading Shakespeare if you don't already, it's not as impenetrable as you might think, particularly with edited editions that have page by page glossaries to help out. Plus it's the kind of thing that is part of culture's collective unconscious and it is never going to go out of style.

Playing With The Grownups
Sophie Dhal
Bloomsbury 5/5/2008 Paperback
5/5
Christmas Haul

Roald Dhal's granddaughter did well here, she has a readable style and the voice of her character matures with the story, which I thought was very well done. The story it's self was only a little unsatisfactory by the end (of the timeline), but I think by using snapshots of the future throughout the book, that it was the best possible way to handle that passage of time.
It's a sad chaotic story of the children of a creative and adventurous mother, with the safety of money behind it all. It's self destructive characters are relate able and pitiable.
Definitely one to pass around the office as a utterly respectable read, but nothing for the classics shelf. There's definite amazing writing, but I think the subject didn't really allow space to expand the style.