A Single Story...

I had the enormous privilege of seeing Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie speak about her latest novel last week. I knew nothing about her except that she was Nigerian and that she had written a book I'd loved (Americanah 2014 #29 in The Book Nook). I left the event 90 minutes later inspired and wanting to know more.

Today I watched Chimimanda's TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story. Throughout she talks about how limiting and how damaging a single story or viewpoint about a person can be, that it creates stereotypes that while not necessarily incorrect, are more often than not incomplete. That a single story creates presumption rather than openness, a potential wall of prejudice in our relationships with one another as human beings. She told of her own single stories, blown apart by having the opportunity to see things from a different perspective and also of the single stories about herself, experienced through the eyes of others.

It made me think more about single stories and one of the most extreme and damaging of all time - the Nazi 'story' about the Jews. Scary stuff.

It also made me think about the single stories about me: each twist of my kaleidescope reveals a potential single story - laconic Aussie, 40-something woman, single lady, career woman, Dutch pragmatist just to name a few. Even so, the whole is so much more than just the sum of all of these.

Then there are my single stories about others and I began thinking about how this starts with our parents. We see them as Mum and Dad and then they become 'people' as we get more and more perspective about them. How my Dad went from the person I thought was my biggest critic to someone who was more proud of me than I ever knew. How my Mum continues to be one of the strongest and most inspiring women I know, rising to every challenge and finding strength of purpose again and again in making a difference. 

I was even thinking beyond people to my original single story about London and how every discovery I make about it both enriches my experience of living here and deepens my love for this amazing city. 

It made me think about my reading of Americanah as my first dip into 'Nigeria' and how much I loved it and took the story to heart. And how this was my single story until I saw Chimimanda speak both on Thursday night and today on her TED talk. 

And as I only read it three weeks ago, it made me think (not for the first time) that life has the ability to transform when you read.

So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Literary London...

For those of you who keep an eye on my literary forays - whether through The Book Nook or on Good Reads - you'll know that my Year in Books has gotten off to somewhat of a prolific start. Having set my yearly target at 54 books (that's one a week then bumped up to match last year's tally), I am already reading #24. That's right - three shy of the halfway mark and only 25% of the year gone. 

So I was walking up to North Finchley last week and noticed this street poster for CityRead London.

Intrigued I came home, googled and found out about this wonderful initiative.

Launched in 2012, CityRead London is an annual literary festival held in April each year which is designed to have us read a little something about London...together. Then throughout the month, the book is brought to life with literary events and talks in borough libraries all over the capital. This year it's Louisa Young's My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You, a love story set during the first World War. Released early in 2011, this book was short-listed for the Wellcome Prize, the Costa Novel Award and The National Book Awards that same year.

There has been a plethora of authors eager to showcase London and all of its charms over the centuries (think back to Charles Dickens in the 1800s who actually wrote part of Martin Chuzzlewit just up the road here in Finchley). So the choice must have been a challenging one with so much to choose from but for all its accolades, I had not heard of Young or this particular book.

I love reading about this wonderful city: its history, its place in the modern world or simply as a backdrop to a cracking story. One of my very favourite books of the last few years is John Lanchester's Capital so with all of this London literary love in mind, I have Amazon One-Click-ed Young's war tale to Audrey's lovely e-pages. 

What an inspired and clever way to promote reading (and to get me to download yet another book to my kindle this week).

Yellow Peril...

In my last post I mentioned that I'd been travelling in the USA and one of the rare delights of hanging about (for hours!) in airport terminals is browsing through the local portfolio of magazines. The New Yorker is a bit of a fave so that's found its way into my reading pile again. But I've uncovered a new candidate for my affections - Mental Floss - and having recently discovered their witty snippets on twitter (@mental_floss), I was delighted to find the magazine on the newsstand and spent part of my time Seattle-bound, devouring its pages.

Anyway this leads to the point of this post - flowers. In particular, yellow flowers. And not because it's Valentine's Day. 

(I'm a bit bah-humbug about Valentine's Day and would much prefer to receive protestations of love all year 'round.)

No, it's because I have just purchased my first daffodils of 2014.

This is a bunch from a prior year as mine haven't bloomed yet. However I expect to get up tomorrow morning and seeing bright bobbing blossoms emerging from their green buds.

Sigh!

I do find such happiness in a simple (and inexpensive) bunch of cheerful daffs.

But according to Mental Floss, when it comes to a splash of golden colour, it's not always sunshine and roses daffodils. In fact it could be downright perilous.

In Japan, a bunch of yellow flowers means 'I'm jealous' so green with envy seems not to apply in the land of the rising sun. In Peru, it's a declaration of hatred while in Russia, the message is 'let's break up', not exactly what you'd want to receive at any time of the year let alone on the 14th of February. 

But yellow flowers need not always be a declaration of your lack of affection. According to Mental Floss, if you are in Mexico, scattering marigolds over someone's grave means 'come back to Earth and visit me'...

Marigolds decorate this grave to encourage the soul to rise again

So on this St Valentine's Day, if you've planned to say it with flowers, choosing yellow may not be the floral tribute your heart's desire is looking for.

However, my source informs me that daffodils mean rebirth and new beginnings, regard and chivalry and 'you're the only one'.

So if I'm your 'one' - or even one of a special 'few' - you can feel free to send me some of these golden yellow trumpets any time of the year.

Between The Sheets...My Year In Books

It's a bright shiny Saturday and I have a mountain of chores on my to-do list at Gidday HQ today but I couldn't help but dwell a little longer between the sheets this morning to finish my 4th book of the year so far, Liane Moriarty's The Husband's Secret. (Yes I know - four already!) I have been reading it for the last few days on my tube ride in and out of London and I just couldn't start my weekend without knowing how it all turned out in the end. 

My literary start to 2014 has been a good one with three cracking 4-stars and a pleasant 3-star to kick off the year. And having returned to my commuting routine, I thought it was a good time to review 2013, my year spent flicking through Audrey's e-pages. 

Looking back through the list, it was an interesting spread of surprises, themes and disappointments. I 'favourited' new writers and revisited old ones, I read about places in fact and in fiction and as is wont to happen along the way, I found myself both disappointed and delighted by my bookish meanderings.

The 5-star favourites were few and fabulous. In February I roamed the streets of South West London in John Lanchester's Capital (2013 #6), revisited a long forgotten fave in March, author Val McDermid and Killing the Shadows (2013 #13) and went nuts in August for Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (2013 #35). And the theme through all of these? Who really dunnit.

You might be thinking one of two things at this point. She's extremely discriminating or she's really stingy with her stars. With 5-star ratings I am - something has to really make an impact to get one of the these so this trilogy comprises the stand-outs of the year. But it's not all about the stand-outs - I had a myriad of great reads during 2013 with 26, or 48%, of my 54 reads warranting a 4-star rating. So perhaps not so stingy.

At the other end of the spectrum, I awarded eight 2-star and one 1-star rating, the latter being #38 in 2013's Book Nook, Charlotte Moseley's The Mitfords: Letters from Six Sisters. Having read about the Mitford girls several years ago, I was so looking forward to reading this book of letters. But I struggled and strained right up to the final page, confused by pet names and left bereft of the enchantment I'd hoped for. It felt like it went on forever. Maybe I'm just not a letters kind of girl.

And of the eight 2-stars, I was most disappointed by Hilary Mantel's Bringing Up The Bodies (I made the comment 'drowned in detail' in the Book Nook 2013 #47) and the damp squib that was Fifty Shades Freed (#8) which was anti-climactic to say the least. 

Returning to the 4-stars, four of the 26 writers accompanied me on journeys near and far starting in January with David Revill's London by Tube: A History of Underground Station Names (#5) now stored on Audrey for dipping back in to now my daily commute has gone 'tubular'. In May, I tucked a borrowed Paris: The Secret History (#18 by Andrew Hussey) into my backpack and read page after page in the glorious Paris sunshine and in June, I was inspired by my visit to Seattle-A in - yes you guessed it - Seattle to buy Sons of the Profits: There's No Business Like Grow Business by Seattle's famous son William Speidel (#25). And then it was back home to old London Town in September with Niall Fergusson's controversial (as it turned out when I read the reviews) Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World (#36).

And last but not least, there were the delightful surprises. Since my entry to Kindle-dom, I have a rule that I will not pay more for an e-book than I would for a 'paper' book (and given Tesco across the road offers 2 for £7 on paperbacks...well, you do the maths). This means I'm often found digging around Amazon or Kindle's Daily Deals for a complete unknown...which can end up being an absolute diamond.

As far as the diamonds go, I stepped into an extraordinary expat story with The Cypress Tree, Kamin Mohammadi's tale of growing up in Iran and then leaving the home of her childhood for London (#3). I took a walk alongside Harold Fry to be reminded of the joy in small everyday things (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce #16). I discovered a new string in CJ Sansom's bow with his post-civil-war tale in Winter In Madrid (#17) and I was moved by Tan Twan Eng's story of war-torn Malaysia in The Gift Of Rain (#26). And to round off the year, I came back to London to meet The Radleys (#53), a truly surprising find given vampire tales are not a genre I usually enjoy.

So that was 2013, my year in books. As always, feel free to have a browse through the Book Nook tab for my thoughts and links to reviews on all of my literary meanderings. I've actually set myself a target of 54 books again for this year - a little more than one per week. So stay tuned. As I mentioned, 2014 is already off to a cracking start!

The Information Super Highway...

I'm reading a book by Niall Ferguson called Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World. It's a fascinating read and already - I am just under halfway through - we've explored piracy, banking and borrowing (a system borrowed from the Dutch no less), colonisation and slavery. And we've even been to deepest darkest Africa for one of the most famous salutations in history, "Dr Livingstone, I presume". 

The latest chapter covers the Victorian Empire and I've just finished reading about India and Queen Victoria's increased interest in foreign affairs following the Indian Mutiny in 1857. What is interesting about this particular time in history is that the 'world' is shrinking. The far reaches of the imperial fold are becoming more accessible with steam power and advances in iron being used to industrialise the empire. Travelling by steamer is reducing journey times and technology is driving industry and commerce to the point where consumerism is no longer restricted to the ruling classes.

In our modern day lives, the world is literally at our fingertips with news from across the globe available in a matter of minutes. But did you ever think about where it all started?

Francis Ronalds offered his idea of the telegraph to the Navy in 1816. The Admiralty turned it down and it took the private sector to see - and develop - its possibilities for overland communication. However, it wasn't until the adoption of a rubber-like substance from Malaya called gutta-percha that durable undersea cables could be manufactured, opening up the potential of Ronalds' brainchild to expansion on a global scale.

And so it was that in 1851 the first cross-channel cable was laid with the first transatlantic cable to follow in 1866. By 1880 over 97,000 miles of cable criss-crossed the world, joining continent with continent and creating the world's first global communications network.

So as we log on, read emails, surf for news and opinions and tap-tap-tap away to cast our particular version of word-smithery out into the digital ether, let's give a nod to the acquisitive ambition of the British Empire.

And to the miracle of gutta-percha...

...the original information super highway.

A Capital Evening...

Last night I went to see an interview with John Lanchester, author of Gidday From The UK's Book Nook entry Capital (#6 in 2013).

Lanchester, while sounding as English as they come (to my ear anyway) was born in Germany and spent his early years in Hong Kong before being educated in England. He has bridged the literary leap from journalist to author via what might appear to be a rather convoluted crossing: writing obituaries, reporting on the football, editing books, contributing to The New Yorker and becoming deputy editor of the London Review of books. I think it's safe to say he comes from the 'broad church' school of writing.


John Lanchester
image source: www.faber.co.uk

And he can really write. I loved Capital - what Lanchester calls his Big Fat London Novel - especially the minutae of the residents in and visitors to a reasonably affluent suburban street not so far from where I used to live, so I was really looking forward to this chat with the Guardian Book Club's John Mullan.

The interview was fascinating and the hour was crammed with glimpses into the mind of this interesting and engaging writer and when I left, two of his quotes especially stood out for me.

The first is London is a city that the world presses on. 

This is a feeling that I've tried to capture so many times when asked - as people do when you are Australian - what are you doing here? The best I've been able to come up with is that London is in the 'centre' of things and that Australia feels incredibly isolated and 'out of things' by comparison (mind you, this is not always a bad thing). The rush of being in the centre of the world's issues is addictive and as these simple words left Lanchester's lips, I felt the voice in my head say emphatically, 'yes that's exactly it.'

The second quote referred to the 2011 Census (which Lanchester mentions several times over the hour - obviously one of his own addictions!). 45% of the London population classes their ethnicity as White British. That means that White British are in the minority in London.

With such a large multi-cultural population, I've always felt quite a distinct and unusual dichotomy between the newness and ferocity of the immigrants and the resigned apathy inherent in London's incumbents. Lanchester talked about the range of non-London characters in the book and how they provide a fresh set of eyes and opinions on what others might either see as ordinary or may not even notice at all.

He particularly talked about his Polish builder (a mere visitor in the fabric of this extraordinarily everyday street) and this character's amazement at seeing the extreme drunken-ness around the edges of Clapham Common, a way he's never seen people (particularly girls) behave back in Poland.

This is something I try to do. Not the extreme drunken-ness (oh you naughty Gidday-ers!) I mean to have that fresh-eyed view. Being present to the extraordinarily everyday moments: an historic snippet in an unexpected location or a beautiful burst of sky on my early morning commute or some stunning architecture dappled with London light. And then there are those moments of human-ness - sometimes in an exuberant child or a cache of voluble friends, at other times a glimpse of a soul bathed in poignant solitary-ness.

His responses to the questions from the audience were every bit as interesting and all too soon, the event came to a end and I was left inspired to read more of this fantastic writer's work.

Yes, I've become a fan.

Lanchester's pragmatic empathy in talking about his vast range of characters and his deep love of this unique and multi-cultural pressure cooker called London have definitely earned him a spot on this immigrant's reading radar.

Commuting Gems...Word Play

I am a great advocate of anything that encourages people to read. I believe that the 'written' word has an extraordinary ability to create new worlds and bring imaginations to life. And I think life (and my commute) has a little less magic and colour without them.

This week I found two inspired ideas that are putting a new and modern spin on word play.

The first is BiblioTech, a bookless public library system. Conceived by a County Court Judge and book lover who saw 'the writing on the wall' for his papery passions, the library was inspired by the Apple Store experience and will be for visitors to loan e-books and, if needed, an e-reader. The aim is to have at least 10,000 titles available upon opening.

Image source: www.springwise.com

Me 'n' Audrey would be in our element!

The second is WonderbooksTM, a clever combination of wordsmithery and game play which encourages gamers to interact with the world of books, and more specifically, Miranda Goshawk's Book of SpellsTM. Using augmented reality technology, 'readers' can experience thousands of different tales as they zoom through the halls of Hogwarts, words leaping from the page as they create their very own individual journeys.

Image source www.zavvi.com

I may never get off the train!

Speaking of journeys, I'm currently reading a fantastic book about the London Underground, delving into the origins of each of the 268 stations on the network (which incidentally took Andi James and Steve Wilson 16 hours 29 minutes and 13 seconds to visit - yes all of them - in 2011's Tube Challenge).

Quite frankly, I'd rather read the book - did I mention it's fabulous?

Many Ways With Words...

This week the Man Booker Prize shortlist for 2012 was announced, the winner to be announced on October 16th.

Of the six authors, I have heard of only one, Hilary Mantel, having read Wolf Hall last year (see #31 in 2011 in The Book Nook).

This also means I have actually read a Man Booker Prize Winner (Wolf Hall won in 2009) although now I look back through the Man Booker archive, I have also read other winners like Yann Martel's Life of Pi (2002), Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992) and have the 1982 winner Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally ready to go on Audrey.

But what does it really all mean? How can a small and select group of people decide what story shall be the best that 2012 has to offer?

I've read 42 this year and Robert Harris' Fatherland (#17) and Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram (#1) stand tall in Gidday's list of cracking reads so far. Neither of these are recent books (Fatherland was written 20 years ago, Shantaram in 2003) nor do they appear anywhere in the Man Booker archives.

Sir Peter Stothard, the chairman of this year's panel of Man Booker Prize judges, contributed a thought-provoking piece in yesterday's The Times which made me stop and think about our relationship with literature.

This year, the judging panel will have read 145 works of fiction (some 2-3 times) in the months leading up to October 16th when the winner is announced. That's 102 more than I have read so far this year.

(Where does one find time for this I wonder? Does judging become a full-time job that you wrap around another lesser for a time full time job?)

Stothard claims that this year's shortlist showcases some of our greatest prose-writers. He also says that he's learnt to speak up for literary criticism, an act in itself which requires work and technique and an ability to argue critically the merits - or otherwise - of a particular book. Which, he says, is not the same as reading for leisure.

He has also embraced 'Kindle love' whilst still advocating both printed books and the opportunities that bookshops and catalogues provide to explore material outside the domain of the publishing houses. He implores novellists to write novels first as opposed to writing novels for big screen adaption. And with his literary journalist hat on, admits a guilty preference for writing, from time to time, about subjects and themes rather than about a book itself.

Great writing liberates us all, he says. Expect to be resisted and keep an open mind.

But consider that it's not a fomulaic argument he poses.

Perhaps great writing is a meeting of story and subtext - the author's story and your own subtext - and the magic that occurs when new worlds are opened up and the story shapes us, even ever so slightly, though its tone and texture and sense of possibility. I felt the rhythmic intensity of Roberts' Indian slums, the calculated humanity in Harris' post war world and the cycle of hope and despair in the tiny boat tossing on the sea in Martel's Life of Pi.

Their story and my subtext: could that be the literary equivalent of a match made in Heaven?

In any case, his article has prompted me to check out the Shortlist for myself - here they are in case you've been inspired too:

Narcoplis by Jeet Thayli
Bringing Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
Umbrella by Will Self

I figure if over 700 books (across five judges) have been read this year to give me this shortlist, the least I can do is give them a whirl!

This post is also part of Post of the Month Club - September 2012

The Games People Play...

Not long ago, I succumbed to the hype and read Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. The brief review I'd read of the movie release did enough to convince me that it was a premise I'd find interesting: the human condition and how far we are prepared to stretch our own moral truths to survive and, indeed, thrive.

And it was a great story, gritty and fast-paced. In fact, so absorbed was I that I forgot that the protagonist is only 16 years old. Her story is riveting as she grows to face an adult world of expectation well beyond her own experience in the impoverished District 12. 

But here's what struck me most - the concept of the game.

The game is something that has grown to become part of our landscape with all the gadgets a heart might desire to make imagined worlds come to life. I remember the original Dungeons and Dragons and in my twenties, I got completely hooked on Riven and Myst thanks to a boyfriend of the time. Then life took me away from gaming until about eight years ago when a close association with a couple of teenagers (and another rather older "adolescent") introduced me to The Sims, Runescape and World of Warcraft. And haven't games all come a long way - so life-like. So real that the imagined and real worlds blur. And a player's highest praise is that they can lose themselves and escape from reality.

Like all of those spectators in The Hunger Games.

But it's not the first time I've found myself wondering about games of the people kind. As I read Collins' tale, I was taken back over 20 years to another book, William Golding's Lord of the Flies. This tale follows a group of English school boys deserted on an island, their attempts at creating their own society to survive and the savage power plays that lead to  not only the deaths of Simon and Piggy, but also the "young gentlemen's" rules by which they had always played.

At the end of the book, the boys are rescued but in reading those final pages, I couldn't help wondering whether it had all been part of some big experiment by the adults. And in re-reading the book again after The Hunger Games, the parallels between the two "themes" seemed even more obvious - what does the veneer of society actually hide?

To my mind The Hunger Games reads like Lords of the Flies sexed up for the World of Warcraft generation. But maybe I'm reading too much into it. What do you think?

Do you think the games we play reveal something of the way we would like our future to be or more about our "deep, dark past"?

A Woman of Substance...Again!

Here I am in the closing hours of a very chilled bank holiday weekend. Having spent yesterday in complete and utter indolence, I had decided that today should feature something a little more productive. So I ventured out for a brisk 40 minute walk around the local park this morning...

...and that's about all I've managed.

After being tempted by the final film in my current LoveFilm trio this morning (Inception, and by the way, it was absolutely brilliant) I kept the telly on in the background while I sat down to tap-tap-tap away. That's when all my good intentions flew out of the window.

One of my favourite books as a teenager was Barbara Taylor-Bradford's A Woman of Substance and guess what's showing on the telly - the whole series from 1984, back to back.

So I've climbed to the Top of the World (in the book this is Ramsden Crags on the Yorkshire Moors) and I'm just flitting about at the opening of the new Harte's department store in Leeds. I can't wait for the rest of the adventure to unfold...again!

The Good Book...

Lately, the e-book has come in for a bit of schtick.

At the end of February, Stylist columnist Lucy Mangan said said 'E-readers are representative of our mindless embrace of all that purports to be 'progress''. Then a month later fellow blogger Russell Ward described the Kindle as 'cold and calculating in its determination to deliver the electronic word seamlessly to you'.

Ouch!

Admittedly I was a slow convert, clinging on to both the physical and the ritual around my serious book habit. And I still love a good book shop browse. In fact last week I had an hour to kill before meeting A-used-to-be-down-the-hill and I spent it wandering through Foyles at St Pancras Station, perusing the latest dust jackets, dipping into travel guides (I'm off to Rome for a little city break soon) and flicking through the pages of Titanic-themed tomes in the special event section. Lovely stuff.

But the thought of finding more space in my already full bookshelf, packed with old theatre programs, illustrated coffee table books - for which I have no coffee table - and those volumes dubbed with 're-read me status' or acquired in youthful nostalgia (my hard back Jane Austen set and the 7-book Chronicles of Narnia being a couple of these) before my Kindle conversion, holds little allure.

On the other hand my Kindle - christened Audrey for her stylish simplicity - goes everywhere with me. There is nothing cool or calculating about immersing myself in a few quick chapters while on the bus, waiting for a friend, in the boarding lounge and even before lights out at night. Audrey is always at the ready and the Kindle shop only a few clicks away. Apart from my favourites, both old and new, I've discovered authors I would never have come across and been able to support the burgeoning efforts of a couple of budding writers in my blogging circle - just check out 2011's Book Nook numbers 51, 55a and 57.

Granted a Kindle is not the be all and end all. After all, there is nothing like a travel book for sitting on the plane, standing on a street corner in a new city or sipping espresso in a funky cafe, marking the places to be seen with folded corners and scribbled annotations and plotting my next adventure(s).

And I haven't quite managed the conversion of my magazine or Saturday Times newspaper habit yet but let's face it, the only way to conquer the Samurai Sudoku or the cryptic version of the Jumbo Crossword is curled up on my couch, pen in hand, steaming coffee at my elbow.

But villifying the Kindle and all its counterparts seems a little extreme. Like laptops, smartphones and iPods, the e-reader is just another symbol of our increasingly mobile lives and to my mind, something that encourages the consumption of the written word in every place or space. And that can only be a good thing.

Books still have their place in my life. But for me the power lies in the storytelling.

And I get to take that everywhere.

Open Day...Opening Minds...

I'm just back from The Guardian newspaper's inaugural Open Day. I hadn't really heard much about it until this week but was drawn in by an email inviting me (as a subscriber to all things Guardian Book Club) to an interview with Robert Harris to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his first novel, Fatherland.

I've not read Fatherland but I have read Imperium and Pompeii (see number 41. in 2011's Book Nook exploits). So based on these two and a successful first Guardian Book Club outing late last year, I bought myself a ticket.

The premise of Fatherland is this: What would happen if Hitler had won the war?  It's an interesting idea. What sort of world might we live in now had just one or two things fallen Hitler's way?

There is actually a genre for this sort of book - Alternate History - where facts are extruded into the what if scenarios of the author's imagination and with Harris' CV including time as political editor at The Observer, I was looking forward to an interesting discussion.

And what a thought provoking hour it turned out to be. Harris admitted that he had not read this novel since it was published in 1992 but spoke of his love for finding out the facts and then exploring the possibilities around them. Not for him the realms of pure fantasy: he actually likened his lack of appreciation to garlic and vampires. But his passion for his genre was evident as he spoke about the extraordinary lifecycle of power and politics, proposing views of his own and discussing the opinions of others. 

His own exploration of political power both as a political journalist/editor and as a writer suggests to him that the horror of the Holocaust is not so far away from you and I: the persuasive nature of power nurtures behaviours which promote survival and he talked about the Nazi Party as simply a bunch of lawyers and administrators who, as the majority of humankind would do, protected their own interests - families, friends, life itself -  and found themselves embroiled in a new, albeit inconceivable, staus quo.

Harris also spoke of books he's loved and Kingsley Amis and Martin Cruz-Smith rated a mention as writers of particular brilliance. (Although upon racing home, I was disappointed to find no mention of Gorky Park on Amazon's list of e-books for Audrey - boo! I say).

Much to my relief the discussion was so varied and interesting that interviewer John Mullan did not have the opportunity to quiz Harris about the ending of Fatherland (which a book club interview usually does) so it is with unexpected curiosity that I can look forward to tucking into Fatherland sans spoilers.

Harris' eloquence and his knowledge of and passion for his subject made the hour go very quickly and I'm glad I ignored the delights of my sunny back patio this afternoon for this opportunity to explore some new ideas. And as I wandered back to Kings Cross station in the sunshine, I found myself smitten all over again with this fabulous city I've come to call home. 

A Penchant For Poirot...

I love a good whodunit. Film, book, TV, play - it doesn't matter, I love them all. Most of the time it's a guessing game trying to work out who the culprit is but sometimes it's evident quite early - whether that's via masterful deduction a good guess on my part or a through the story itself - but the thrill remains in seeing how the criminal will be exposed.


Christie 1890 - 1976

I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie and it was she who sparked my love affair with novels of the criminal kind long before modern crime writers put their graphic, and often gory, pens to paper. Her ingenious storytelling has me lifting layer after layer of delicious and dastardedly detail with every page I turn and her quirky protagonists capture my imagination with their idosyncracies and perversity.

Christie's first murder mystery was The Mysterious Affair at Styles and was published late in 1920 in the US (followed by the UK early in 1921). She went on to write over 200 of the little blighters as well as 6 novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. That's a lot of tap-tap-tapping in my world!

It all started with Parker Pyne Investigates when I was about 11 and I went on to enjoy books, films and plays - like The Mousetrap, which has been running on the West End continuously for 60 years and began life as Three Blind Mice - as Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot were brought to life for me again and again. There's the international - Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun - and the close to home - Murder at the Vicarage, 4.50 from Paddington, Pocket Full of Rye - to name just a few. And having only read/seen 31, I've still got quite a few to go.


Suchet masters Poirot's peccadillos perfectly

This weekend, ITV3 is playing Poirot movies all day every day - I am in heaven. David Suchet is absolutely brilliant as the pernickety Poirot and I've managed to add Sad Cypress and The Hollow to my seen/read list today. Death on the Nile is running now but I've seen it before and know whodunit so it's time to check out tomorrow's TV listings to see what other Christie gems I can add to my cache.

And Mrs McGinty's Dead is looking promising...

Turkish Delight...

Not a week has passed in this magnificent new year and already Gidday from the UK is bringing you delight from around the globe - Turkish Delight that is.

Jack Scott is a fellow expat - an Englishman in Turkey (Bodrum in fact) - and he's written a book. His blog, Perking the Pansies is his catalogue of daily thoughts on the world of two gay men in foreign land - in turns thought-provoking and funny, always witty and honest. 

And now there's the book...

This is not just a collection of blog posts. Rather Jack weaves the tale of the dichotomous life of an expat with poignancy and humour. The wondering where you belong, what 'life' to build and how to bridge the gap between life BE (Before Expat) and the unfamiliar 'now' remains as relevant to me now as eight years ago when I arrived in the UK and I look forward to finding out what happens next for Jack and Liam.

So without further ado, I am proud to present Gidday's first guest for 2012, Jack Scott.

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Gidday from Turkey

Here on Gidday from the UK you’ll read about an Aussie girl’s life in Blighty and beyond, her thirst for reading and her need to scratch those itchy travelling feet. Her writing is eloquent, varied, fun and informative. I’ve always got along with Antipodeans. We share similar cultural roots and laugh at the same things, but our cousins Down Under aren’t afflicted with the same level of debilitating cynicism that stalks many Brits these days. I find this refreshing. To my eternal shame, I’ve never been to Oz. My partner, Liam, has. He loved it and wanted to stay. Forever. He even considered re-training as a hairdresser to gain enough points to emigrate (crimpers were in short supply at the time, apparently). From civil servant to coiffeur would have made a dramatic career change. He thought better of it when he realised it was a gay cliché too far. That was before he met me, of course.

When Gidday writes about London, it’s like a magical trip down memory lane for me. I enjoy our current lives as a wanton Lotus Eaters here in Turkey, but London Town is my home town and it’s where my heart is. I love Turkey but I’m in love with London. This ‘here and there’ tension is one of the recurring themes of my new book, Perking the Pansies, Jack and Liam move to Turkey. Were we insane to sell up, chuck in the jobs and move lock, stock and barrel to a Muslim country? Well, we’re still here but it’s been a rocky road. When I was recently asked to sum up our time in Turkey, I struggled to paraphrase the complexity of our experiences and emotions: ‘misery and joy, bigotry and enlightenment, betrayal and loyalty, friendship, love, earthquakes, birth, adoption and a senseless murder.’ Life in the Smoke was never this eventful. You couldn’t make it up.

Thank you so much to Gidday for featuring Perking the Pansies on the Book Nook list. I’m in elevated company. If you like what you see, the book is available on paperback and Kindle at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
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ps...If you want to see what I thought, pop over to The Book Nook and check out No. 57. Alternatively, if you are looking for a veritable pantheon of praise, I and many others have spread the word on Amazon so you can click here for that.

Done and Dusted...Commuting Gems

This week, about 10 weeks ahead of schedule, I smashed the 50 Book Challenge.

That's right peeps - I've read 50 books this year.

(Actually this morning it stands at 51 but who am I to quibble over such a detail?)

Along the way, I unearthed some real Commuting Gems, writers that will continue to feed my long and literary journey to and from work every day. Douglas Kennedy made the grade early - I have read three of his books this year - closely followed by slightly off-centre crime fiction from Chris Brookmyre (I've read two of his). More recently, I discovered the joys of Jonathan Frantzen, Jo Nesbo and Scott Mariani and have already started my next Ben Hope Adventure (Mariani's protagonist).

I have also travelled far and wide from the comfort of my reading spot(s) - through the post 'et tu Brutus?' period of the Roman Empire (Colleen McCullough) and in a black cab across America with the incomparable everyman himself, Stephen Fry. I have immersed myself in the cultural melting pot of a Russian community in China with Kate Furnivall and stood in awe of the great and mighty Vesuvius with Robert Harris.

Let's not forget the little bit of star-spotting l managed either. I rubbed literary shoulders with Sir Elton, Alistair Campbell, Billy Connelly, Jane Austen and young Queen Victoria!

The stalwarts of my literary days gone by were there too - Lionel Shriver, Michael Connelly and Dick Francis (although after three of the latter, I might say nay - neigh, geddit? - to a Francis horse-racing extravaganza for a while).

I've also dropped in on old favourites like Heathcliff & Cathy and Meg, Jo, Beth & Amy. I read about risk and danger, and about a girl who played with fire and then made things worse by kicking the hornet's nest. 

I've even managed both a trip back to old Melbourne town (courtesy of Christos Tsiolkas) and a joyful celebration with fellow expat Bill Bryson, of the fabulous place I now call home.

Who knew that commuting four hours each day could bring such joy! 

Not all was smooth sailing (or commuting if you prefer). Three made my 'Disappointing' List - number 6 from Margot Berwin, number 15 from David Gibbins and 39 from Dawn French. Not so marvellous. But 3 out of 50 (that's just 6% says she, whipping out her trusty calculator to double check her mental maths) ain't bad. And look at all of the things I have experienced and discovered.

So if you've been inspired at all by my bookish banging on, or are looking for some great reads to add to your own (e)bookshelf, you can see them all - along with what I thought of them - at The Book Nook which, in the spirit of encouraging readership and literacy, I will continue to update.

Happy reading peeps!

Freedom Of Speech...

There's been a bit of a bookish theme emerging in my posts of late - from the advent of Audrey to yesterday's Literary Gold and a little bit of something in between - and I've been inspired again by some leisurely breakfast reading over some excellent pancakes and coffee this morning.

Apparently Michael S. Hart died earlier in the month. 'Michael S Hart?' you say. 'Never heard of him.'  Nor had I. But this is the man behind the quest to provide free books for everyone on the Internet.

Michael S. Hart was an American author who began Project Gutenberg, an 'organisation' (for want of a better word) that provides free e-books to the general public. Trying to understand what more he might do with the computer provided to him by the University of Illinois computer centre, he wondered what value might be brought about through using it as part of a potential information network and on Independence Day 1971, he typed in the American Declaration of Independence and posted the text for others to download. 

And all this well before what we've come to know and love as the World Wide Web.

By 1987, he had posted 313 books this way including the Bible, Homer, Mark Twain and Shakespeare. Then through the University's PC User Group and with help of programmer Mark Zinzow, he was able to create a way for others to be involved as well. As at today's count, 36,000 e-books have been digitised and digitally proofed by a veritable army of volunteers. And are completely free.

Aside from his commitment to providing e-books to as many people as possible, Michael's mission was to "Help Break Down the Bars of Ignorance and Illiteracy".  

He may have lived a rather impoverished life but to my mind, Mr Hart left us an amazing legacy.

ps...BTW, I'm in Prague peeps. Posting this from a rather lovely hotel room. You may be wildly envious if you like. Look out for my travelling titbits soon.

The Cat In The Hat...Is Back!

I went into work a little late today and someone had generously left their Times newspaper on the seat opposite so excited by a little more erudite reading I started to flick through the pages.  The big news today is this: the Liberal Democrats are having their Annual Party Conference, SAB Miller has bought Foster's Australia and the most exciting news of all, The Cat In The Hat is back!

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1904 and aside from being an animator, cartoonist and artist, under the nom de plume of Dr Seuss he published some of the most notable and loved children's books in history. Who can forget Green Eggs and Ham, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Fox in Sox, The Cat In The Hat, The Cat In The Hat Comes Back and a whole lot more? Over 200 million of them in 15 different languages. And a Peabody, two Emmys, two Oscars and a Pulitzer to show for it. Now THAT'S prolific.

So imagine when I read that just next week, the new Dr Seuss lost story collection will be out. Discovered like a buried treasure - Carter may have discovered the treasures of Tut but scholar Charles D Cohen has hit the literary jackpot.  Here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

One bright sunny day, a young duck named McKluck

Had a wonderful wonderful piece of good luck.

He was walking along when he spied on the ground

A marvellous thing that is quite seldom found.

'Twas a small silver box. And it looked mighty old

And on top of this box, it was written in gold:

"Who finds this rare box will be lucky, indeed,

For inside this box is a Bippolo Seed!

Plant it and wish! And then count up to three!

Whatever you wish for, whatever it be

Will sprout and grow out of a Bippolo Tree."

So here goes...

                One

                        Two

                                 Three


                                            TAH DAAAAH!!

The Bippolo Tree and Other Lost Stories is out on September 29th.

That's only 7 sleeps to go.

Result!

ps...thank goodness I was late and picked up that discarded paper eh? Beats that shoddy 'excuse for a beer' story any day!