Hey Kids.
I've been very busy recently, and so bookish things have been put to one side recently. One thing that's been making me busy is my new job in a bookshop. Hurrah!
However, I have not been so busy that I haven't found the time to shop. Oh no. I found Graham Swift's Shuttlecock for 50p in a book exchange in Notting Hill recently (not realising until later than it won the Booker Prize - so it baffles me that Gower St Waterstone's didn't have a copy - as I found out on an extended, leisurely, Friday break from Joyce). Followers of this blog might have picked up on my Swift love. Today I bought a copy of Jonathon Safran Foer's Eating Animals, in the hope that it'll provide some sort of moral impetus to turn to vegetarianism. It has an HFW quotation on the front, proving that I am as much a sucker for celebrity promotion as the next girl.
On JSF: if anyone reading this fancies buying me a nice, expensive birthday present, you couldn't do better than his newest title Tree of Codes. It looks just amazing. £25 (RRP; note Amazon price of £15.56) seems a bit steep, given that most of the pages are cut out, but I'm hoping the intellectual experience might be worth it.
And on that note, if you do buy it, please - do so from a shop. Please. Bookshops are infinitely better than the internet/Amazon. I will go into why in a later post. (Yes, I know I direct all the links to amazon, but that's only for the 'look inside!' feature. Honestly.)
Friday 25 February 2011
Sunday 13 February 2011
Review: The Novel: An Alternative History
Hello all! A book review for you follows below. It's not mine, and the author would prefer it to be anonymous - though I'm sure would welcome any feedback. Either leave a comment, or email me and I'll pass it on.
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Just finished The Novel: An Alternative History by Steven Moore. How alternative? Well, this is volume 1 of 2, and it only goes up to 1600.
It's not a very deep work, but it's incredibly broad, beginning with ancient Egyptian stories, working through Babylonian myths, the Tanakh, Greek and Roman novelists, Irish myths, Arthur, Norse sagas, the Zohar, and the Renaissance; then it skips over, via Central America, to Indian, Iranian, and Arabic novels, Japan, and ends up in China with three of the Four Great Classical Novels. Stories grow off the pages like trees. It's a pretty amazing tour of fiction and mythology: he defines "novels" rather broadly, especially with the Ancient Near East stuff at the beginning. Even if he occasionally talks about books he hasn't read or haven't been translated into English, the breadth of reading is pretty impressive (and he refers to many more in footnotes), and popular as well as academic - he describes something as fanservice towards the end. He's also enthusiastic and insightful: describing "the novel" as primarily intellectual, rhetorical, and self-absorbed, rather than psychological or truthful. He likes lists, formal designs, and wordplay; for instance, he describes the heroes of Monkey by Wu Cheng-en as "Wu's Tang clan".
If you don't like lists, length, and style, you might not like it. It probably spends too long describing rather than analysing, and Moore's judgements are sometimes sloppy - he describes the end of an Egyptian story as like Kafka or Borges, and later that page as essentially realistic. His defence of the difficult/innovative novel sometimes leads him into the false dichotomy that anything easy to read is worthless. The sections on non-European novels are too brief compared with the European stuff, and it's a very masculine book, both in the sense that there are very few female writers and that Moore loves describing beautiful women and the men who have sex with them. His textual libido is a pain in the neck by the end, and his constant "maledictions against religion", as the index has it, are the same - and I agreed with most of it. Finally, the introduction, in which Moore clears himself some aesthetic elbow room, is too polemical.
Overall, though, I thoroughly recommend it. If there's a similar survey of stories from the whole world and most of history, I don't know of it (but please enlighten me if you do.) Nor can I say how complete it is; in fact, sometimes it seems to have very sparse pickings indeed. It's not close reading or deep criticism, but it is a golden treasury of fiction that's left me itching to get my hands on some of the goodies he mentions.
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Just finished The Novel: An Alternative History by Steven Moore. How alternative? Well, this is volume 1 of 2, and it only goes up to 1600.
It's not a very deep work, but it's incredibly broad, beginning with ancient Egyptian stories, working through Babylonian myths, the Tanakh, Greek and Roman novelists, Irish myths, Arthur, Norse sagas, the Zohar, and the Renaissance; then it skips over, via Central America, to Indian, Iranian, and Arabic novels, Japan, and ends up in China with three of the Four Great Classical Novels. Stories grow off the pages like trees. It's a pretty amazing tour of fiction and mythology: he defines "novels" rather broadly, especially with the Ancient Near East stuff at the beginning. Even if he occasionally talks about books he hasn't read or haven't been translated into English, the breadth of reading is pretty impressive (and he refers to many more in footnotes), and popular as well as academic - he describes something as fanservice towards the end. He's also enthusiastic and insightful: describing "the novel" as primarily intellectual, rhetorical, and self-absorbed, rather than psychological or truthful. He likes lists, formal designs, and wordplay; for instance, he describes the heroes of Monkey by Wu Cheng-en as "Wu's Tang clan".
If you don't like lists, length, and style, you might not like it. It probably spends too long describing rather than analysing, and Moore's judgements are sometimes sloppy - he describes the end of an Egyptian story as like Kafka or Borges, and later that page as essentially realistic. His defence of the difficult/innovative novel sometimes leads him into the false dichotomy that anything easy to read is worthless. The sections on non-European novels are too brief compared with the European stuff, and it's a very masculine book, both in the sense that there are very few female writers and that Moore loves describing beautiful women and the men who have sex with them. His textual libido is a pain in the neck by the end, and his constant "maledictions against religion", as the index has it, are the same - and I agreed with most of it. Finally, the introduction, in which Moore clears himself some aesthetic elbow room, is too polemical.
Overall, though, I thoroughly recommend it. If there's a similar survey of stories from the whole world and most of history, I don't know of it (but please enlighten me if you do.) Nor can I say how complete it is; in fact, sometimes it seems to have very sparse pickings indeed. It's not close reading or deep criticism, but it is a golden treasury of fiction that's left me itching to get my hands on some of the goodies he mentions.
Saturday 5 February 2011
Probably the only thing I will get for Valentine's this year....
..is a promotional email from Foyles. Oh yes. Life of a singleton at its literary best, etc.
Foyles has never been a favourite of mine; in fact, I think it’s pretty much the most overrated bookshop ever. From my experience, the staff are bored and not engaging enough with customers to make it the amazing experience it should be: the last time I went, I didn’t buy anything (proof in itself of a bookshop not coming up to scratch!) and, when a lady bought whatever it was she was after, the staff continued to have their own conversation behind the till, totally ignoring her. Worst service ever – a total bugbear of mine. From what I remember too, they didn’t really use the space very well, and there were no exciting visual promotions. Whatever faults you might think Waterstone’s have, at least their shops are pretty!
Anyway, this email. Further evidence of why I don’t like Foyles. Because I’m feeling angry and pedantic, I really can’t be bothered with a counter-argument to consider why Foyles marketing may have sent this out. I am aware that you can’t read the email (I’ll see if I can make it into an image somehow) but I hope that my description coveys my distaste. Reasons I don’t like it include, but are not limited to:
1. It doesn’t fit on the page properly, and, instead of being beautiful, it’s full of red hyperlinks and horrible blue font:
2. Oh god, Valentine’s day. Yes.
I know bookselling is tough right now....but, really? Urgh. What sort of cretin gets his roses from a bookshop? Why on earth would a bookshop offer roses? Surely something – I don’t know – something bookish? This is the most lateral promotion ever and I totally fail to see the point of it. And I doubt they’d be Fairtrade roses anyway.
3. They make four suggestions for titles you might want to pop in the store and buy, which will be wrapped and, the best bit, tied with a Foyles ribbon. A propos my earlier point, I fail to understand the type of person who would want a Foyles ribbon (but then I also fail to understand the type of person who shops there in the first place).
The titles on offer are all pretty naff. Edward Monkton, though ace, screams 'I bought you a cheap novelty present because I'm wacky, poor, and don't really know you at all well enough'.
4. However! Apparently in Spain the tradition is for men to buy roses and women to buy the books. This is, firstly, something I didn’t know and, secondly, way cute.
5. Then Foyles remembered that it’s also Chinese New Year – which had already gone by the time this email reached me, but we can forget that if you like (New Year was on 3rd February, but this was sent on 4th. Afterthought, anyone?). A much smaller portion of the email is dedicated to this, which is sad. Though I suppose it reflects the general lack of interest in anything that is translated, or not based in some Anglophone society anyway. It'd be hypocritical to criticise this, as I’ve read very little that’s not Anglo-American. Perhaps if Foyles – and every other bookseller too, I should add – could actually invigorate my reading and make me try something outside my core choices, rather than promoting tokenistic titles as per the calendar’s dictation. I can't comment on the titles on offer, for exactly this reason.
6. Ok, maybe I’ve cheered up a little. Clearly lots of events going on! Classical concerts and events at all the different branches (including the new Bristol one – that city definitely needs more bookshops!).
7. The slogan ‘love books, love Foyles’ is a bit naff. Something better please? Sure, it’s better than ‘Feel every word’ (surely ‘read’ would be a more appropriate verb?) but it’s obvious and forgettable. Work on it, marketing types. You could have something great; you have something mediocre.
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