Judith Johnson
  • Blog
  • About me
  • Poetry
  • Miscellanea
  • Travels
  • Projects
  • SWM Extra
  • Pen Portraits
  • Contact/To Buy

Wotcha readin'?

25/1/2015

0 Comments

 
PictureCartoon left by son today on kitchen table!
I usually read a number of books at one time, although currently ‘reading-lite’ (for me!), having only two on the go: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and AE Housman’s poetry collection A Shropshire Lad. I like to mix up the book buffet, interspersing big guns with thinner volumes, fiction with non-fiction, poetry, the odd graphic novel. I like popular fiction as well as the literary stuff, but there are limits - sorry to her fans, but you won’t find me reading Barbara Cartland....

There’s so much out there! Never mind the steady information stream from Twitter, Facebook, BBC website, daily papers etc etc. They say that a Sunday newspaper alone, with all of its supplements, amounts to what would have been the lifetime input for the average medieval person (had more than a handful been able to read!).

The website par excellence, of course, for keen readers, must surely be Goodreads, and I’ve already had a lot of fun adding my 1300+ reads to my page. I’ve had to withdraw from the conversation threads though - looking at these was taking up too much of my precious reading time!

I drive to work, and have my packed lunch round the table with colleagues, so it seems a bit rude to get a book out. My sister, however, who has 40 minutes each way on the train Monday-Friday, gets through a lot more books than me. She’s currently enjoying Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, having recently returned from holiday in Colombia.

As a confirmed bibliophile, and nosey with it,  one of life’s pleasures is sneaking a look over people’s shoulders to see what they’re reading, so e-readers can frustrate this innocent pastime for me, though there is always the cryptic-crossword-style game of trying to guess, from the page on view, what the book might be!

I thought I’d ask people I met this last week what they’re reading, which turned out to be a wide selection. Here’s a dozen of them (six by the fairer sex - hoorah!):

The Talented Mr Ripley    Patricia Highsmith
 Corvus   Esther Woolfson
 Elizabeth is Missing   Emma Healey
 Germany: Memories of a Nation   Neil MacGregor
 Americanah   Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
 How Music Works    David Byrne
 Le Chapeau de Mitterand   Antoine Laurain
 Rubicon  Tom Holland
 The Diary of Anne Frank’(in Spanish)
 The Private Eye Annual of 2014   Ian Hislop
 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying   Marie Kondo
 The Bone Clocks   David Mitchell

But  if I thought I read a lot of books at once, the rosette must surely go to a running friend, whose current reads I enquired upon (breathlessly) the other evening on our 4 mile mostly uphill jaunt round Tunbridge Wells. Here they are - be impressed!!

Hunters of Dune   Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson
Lila   Marilynne Robinson
Who runs this place?   Anthony Sampson
Greek Political Oratory  Penguin Classics
Stardust  Neil Gaiman (on Kindle)

and has recently finished:

The Peripheral    William Gibson
Liberty    Shami Chakrabati
The Trial of Henry Kissinger   Christopher Hitchens

so no David Baldacci or John Grisham there then ...!

I’ll finish with a plug for my husband’s two books, Niedermayer & Hart, a horror thriller, and psychological thriller Roadrage  - both of which he is not ashamed to admit are popular fiction. I really enjoyed reading them, they are both good yarns with well-drawn characters; in spite of my long-term doula/midwife duties before their births (listening to ideas, encouraging, researching and proof-reading) I still found them thrilling, moving and hard to put down, which is a kind of small amazing miracle in itself!  I won’t go on - you can find reviews (the genuine article!) on Goodreads, Amazon and Martin’s website and decide for yourself, but he has a Kindle offer on over the next week (only available on Amazon UK from 8 am Monday 26 January until 2 February) for Niedermayer & Hart, which might be of interest.

If you haven’t heard of an author but the reviews are good, I guess 99p is an acceptable outlay!

Martin’s website: www.mj-johnson.com


0 Comments

Eva by Peter Dickinson

11/1/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
I used to work in a school that had an excellent library, and in moments of stress I’d wander down to browse the ‘new books’ shelf. There was always a great choice, and it was an opportunity for me to keep up with new writing for children and young adults. I still like to read this age-group as a welcome relief from heavier tomes. I sometimes take children’s books out from the local library, and it’s good to support this wonderful institution - use it or lose it!

I was really pleased to see recently that Southborough Library had some Peter Dickinson and Kevin Crossley-Holland in stock, although sadly no Michelle Paver. I’d recommend these three writers  to any child. I am shocked to see how many bookshops don’t have any of them on sale.

During my own childhood, I loved all the magical worlds I could enter via books - CS Lewis’s Narnia, JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth; other favourites included E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Story of the Amulet, George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, BB’s  The Little Grey Men.  As I grew, I also enjoyed John Wyndham’s science fiction. It was the beginning of a lifetime’s relationship with reading.

I only discovered Peter Dickinson in the last decade or so. He is a fantastic writer of children’s literature, creating vividly imagined realities, taking you along with him into the minds and lives of others. I particularly like his dystopian novels for children, including the Changes Trilogy.

Eva is a wonderful book. It tells of the changed life of a 13 year old girl, through whose eyes we picture a future, dystopian world. Eva wakes from sleep to find that her essential human self has been implanted into the living body of a chimpanzee. She had been in an irreversible coma, following a car-crash, and her parents had accepted the offer from a pioneering scientist to carry out the procedure. Eva has grown up with chimps in the family, as her father works with them; she is also a girl with deep inner resources, and is able to accept and adapt in a way that most wouldn’t. The book goes on to explore what happens to her, in a world where wild animals and their habitats have been reduced to tiny numbers by the relentless onward march of the human race, which largely puts the highest value on human life before that of every other creature.

There were resonances for me with  William Golding’s book The Inheritors, and indeed, towards the end of Eva, there is a line which possibly indicates a nod by the author to  that earlier work, published 33 years ago. Of course Eva doesn’t fill in all the details which an adult dystopia might, but it features some profound ideas about our relationship to our fellow creatures and the world about us.  Through Eva’s eyes we can appreciate what it might feel like to be more chimp than human: the feeling (echoing Golding’s Neanderthal protagonist) that the forest is a safe, good place, the deep physical connection with the environment and your clan, the strident ways of humans ... and Dickinson does not go for the idyllic happy ending; he leaves you thinking long after you’ve finished reading - this book leaves its mark.

It led me to reflect on how the vestiges of our ape ancestors live on in us - in my case the high-pitched noises I make when I see a new baby, the diaphragm-produced ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oooh-ooh response to a particularly cute puppy photo, the childhood joys of tree-climbing, the familiar feeling when I hold fruit in the palm of my hand,  the liking for cuddles!

The books that we read as a child are deeply significant - they contribute to our own unique inner map of the world. I’ve occasionally re-read a childhood favourite and met again a principle I’ve lived by. Enid Blyton goes in and out of fashion (though a few  librarians tell me they endure as firm favourites with children!), but the Round the Clock stories still inform some part of my moral compass.

If you don’t know Peter Dickinson’s books, I recommend you take the time to acquaint yourself, or a young friend or relative, with them!

http://peterdickinson.com 

1 Comment
    Picture

    Author

    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

    If you would like to subscribe to my blog, please click on RSS Feed link below:

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Arts
    Books
    Family Matters
    History
    Miscellaneous
    My Fantastic Five
    Natural World
    People
    Running & Walking
    Travel

    Archives

    November 2021
    February 2021
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    November 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    October 2010
    April 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    September 2009
    July 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.