(no subject)

[slemslempike]

The Goldfinch - Donna Tarrt
How Not to Be A Soldier - Lorna McCann
The Last Anniversary - Lianne Moriarty
Small Man in a Book - Rob Brydon
Shopaholic to the Rescue - Sophie Kinsella
A Notable Woman - Jean Lucey Pratt
Longbourn - Jo Baker
Writing Home - Alan Bennett
Alone in Antarctica - Felicity Aston
Head Over Heels - Holly Smale
I've Got Your Number - Sophie Kinsella
The Antarctic Guide to Cooking and Cleaning - Wendy Trusler and Carol Devine
The Crime Trade - Simon Kernick
An Education - Lynn Barber
A Song for Issy Bradley - Carys Bray

I'd been vaguely waiting for The Goldfinch to be in an ebook sale, or available at the library, but finally cracked and bought it. It was excellent, and very sad. Like The Children's Book which made me want to know about pottery, this makes me wish I knew more about art history.

How Not to Be A Soldier is a not very well put together collection of reminiscences by a woman who was in the army. It is quite amusing in places, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who doesn't, for example own the Soldier Soldier box set and enjoy sanctified portrayals of armed forces sometimes against their moral beliefs.

Another Lianne Moriarty - this one about a group of people who run an island attraction about a mysterious disappearance, and a newcomer to their midst. I quite liked it, though it seemed much bouncier and frothy than her other books.

I still think of Rob Brydon as a somewhat bathetic figure after his mock panel show (which I want to rewatch, I think), even though I know full well that it was an act, and his whole thing is a persona. This is relatively interesting, though I'd have like to hear more about his time on a shopping channel and also about how he felt taking over from Angoo on Would I Lie to You.

In Shopaholic to the Rescue, Becky sort of gets cured of a shopping addiction, which is a sad trial to her friends. The whole plot of them together doesn't really work, and though I've complained before about the sameness of all the books (while continuing to read, obv), this departure left me none the happier. I've Got Your Number is an earlier book of hers, I think - a woman loses her engagement ring and gets hold of a mobile phone belonging to a senior executive of a company that is being undermined. She starts answering his emails and voicemails, and interferes in his life, and he is a bit cross, but realises she's very good, and points out that her fiance doesn't value her, and they end up together of course, rather nicely.

A Notable Woman was excellent - an edited diary spanning about 70 years from a middle class woman in England. She started out with crushes at school, tried to study as an architect for a while, but then became a journalist. She ended up running her own bookshop in a small village. She never married but has several love and sex affairs, and her concerns are all too relevant today, whether she can be happy alone, if she is fulfilled, even something like botox happening in the 1930s.

I enjoyed Longbourn, the book about the servants in Pride and Prejudice. I wasn't particularly interested in the male servant, and ended up skimming a lot of the chapters from his perspective. I did like Sarah, and seeing how the girls came there, and the danger that Wickham was to them (far more than he was to Lydia). Also thinking more about the mud on Elizabeth's skirts being cleaned, and their bloody rags.

Writing Home was great. I've been following the twitter feed that posts Bennett's diary entries on the days, so I had already seen quite a few of those. I hadn't read the parts about Miss Shepherd before (though I saw the play on the first run), and that was really interesting to see. The intros/reviews about his plays and others' work were my favourite parts, hearing how he went about writing them, the processes of them getting to the stage, and how that's changed over his writing career.

I read two books about Antarctica written by women, Alone in Antarctica by Felicity Aston, and The Antarctic Guide to Cooking and Cleaning by Wendy Trusler and Carol Devine. The latter was pointed out to me by listersgirl, for which many thanks. Felicity Aston skied across the continent solo. I had wondered how interesting this would be, presuming that it was fairly samey - day one, skied on some snow. Day two, skied on some different snow. But it was really, really good. She talked a lot about the difficult bit being keeping going, of actually getting out of her tent in the morning, which I sympathised a lot with, and how it was much easier with other people becasue you couldn't let them down. Also quite a bit about male dismissive attitudes towards her and her endeavours. The Antarctic Guide to Cooking and Cleaning was about a season the two women spent running a volunteer programme near a Russian base for tourists to come and clean up the debris from the island, while cooking really good food for them. Very interesting, and I intend to try out some of the recipes when I'm back near a kitchen.

Another Geek Model book from Holly Smale - samey like the others, but she does at least come out with a) a new love interest, and b) an actual enjoyment for modelling, so it's moving along. I do like these books.

The Crime Trade is billed as a Tina Boyd book, but it's mostly about her partner. Still enjoyable, but a little lacking for me.

I thought An Education was going to be entirely about her youthful connection with the London crime scene, but it was just one chapter, and also I was imagining a Barbara Windsor style Kray-esque connection, but it was just quite dull and non-violent. Which is good! Non-violence is good! But not very interesting to read about. The rest of it more than made up for it though, a memoir of her journalistic career, from Penthouse onwards, and how the worst people to work for weren't the pornographers, but the white upper class men at the Independent who thought women were mostly an inconvenience. The last chapters, about her husband dying, are very very sad.

A Song for Issy Bradley was written by a woman who grew up in the Mormon church and then left, and I was wondering if it was going to be a denunciation. The family in the book are mormons, and Claire, the mother, is a convert from when she married her husband. He is a bishop, and very caught up in sacrificing his families needs for the good of his church. At the start of the book, their youngest daughter, Issy, aged 4, dies from meningitis. Ian, the father takes comfort from his faith, that they will meet her again in heaven, and so they need to do even more for their community to assure their place there. Claire hates this, hates that she is not allowed to grieve in her own way because it undermines the church, and goes to bed in Issy's bunk, and doesn't come out for a long time. It was very sad, and very good.

Comments

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Goldfinch. I did lose patience with the main character but I loved Boris from start to finish. One of those creatures who is what he is and you forgive a lot. (at least I did.) But your comparison to The Children's Book is an interesting one. (Another book I really enjoyed.) I am familiar with the English Bohemians so it was kind of interesting to note who was based on various figures. One in particular made me shudder.

Notable Woman sounds rather good. I may put that on my list.
My husband brought me a copy of "Small Man in a Box" awhile back. I think it was the first Summer we lived here. He seems like a guy with a pretty healthy perspective on fame and the creative life.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

A Notable Woman I would definitely recommend. At times I wanted to shake her very hard (particularly around men), but it was always very interesting, like reading an lj over many years.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I read Longbourn and think I had similar feelings about the male servant's perspective. Also that there was something a bit silly about the ending, but I can't remember what it was I thought was silly.

I have just reserved A Notable Woman from the library, as a result of your noting its excellence. I am mostly reading crime/murder mysteries at the moment, with occasional divergence into other things, and this sounds like a divergence I will enjoy.