A bookish lockdown

So we're back in lockdown, it's January, it's dark, it's cold.  Not much else to do really is there, except delve into a good book.

One of the dilemmas I enjoy most comes with choosing a new book.  And right now, I've got a million from which to chose.  The best purchase I've made so far this year is Stephen Fry's new book, Troy.  Well, I say purchase - it was actually half price, and with my Waterstones points card covering the balance, I walked out of the Newton Abbot branch with a free book - lovely!  I've also picked up a book I've had my eye on for a while, called In the Reign of King John, a Year in the Life of Plantagenet England - partly because it's stunningly illustrated, I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth into this one.

For Christmas, Lizzie gave me two beautiful Agatha Christie editions - Death on the Nile and Midwinter Murders, although I'll be saving the latter for next Christmas.  I've also been given a book called Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World, focusing on the myriad civilizations that crowded the Middle East and Mediterranean in ancient times, but who have almost entirely been eclipsed by the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians.  And also along the theme of ancient peoples, I'm really looking forward to reading Wisdom of the Ancients by Neil Oliver - it's a book about the core life lessons we can learn from our ancient ancestors, and given where we are right now in society, it sounds somewhat appropriate. If that's not enough already, I've also got Arsene Wenger's autobiography; My Garden World by Monty Don (which I plan to read as we head into spring, so to whet the appetite for the gardening season ahead); Michael Palin's North Korea Journal; and a book whose blurb simply drew me in, called The Bookseller's Tale, billed as a literary celebration written by a man called Martin Latham, who has run the Canterbury branch of Waterstones for some 30 years. 

There's one more book which I'm really pleased to have got my hands on. Mary-Ann Ochota's Secret Britain is an armchair tour of 75 fascinating archaeological sites and artefacts from around the country, again with beautiful illustration throughout.  As an added bonus, there's quite a number of things in the book that I've not yet seen in person, so this is both a great book and a guide to future adventures.  It's also one of those "dip into" books that I love to grab off the shelf whenever I have 20 minutes to relax - fair to say I'm slightly in love with this one.

But with all these books, which do I tackle first?  Well actually, over Christmas I did something of an audit on my reading habits, and found that I'm very biased towards 20th century literature.  Indeed, there's a huge gap in my reading from the 19th century (you can blame Jane Austen and the insufferable Elizabeth Bennett for that) so I'm very mindful to put that right this year, and as a consequence, I've made 657-page Vanity Fair my lockdown challenge.  If I can get on with it, then it'll really feel that I've achieved something out of this gloomy time - and that's something to hold onto.

Books are very important to me, and the more I progress into my 30s, the more attached I'm becoming to them.  They can take you in all kind of wonderful directions - they're simultaneously an escape, an education, a thought-provoker, they're comedy and tragedy, they can affirm what we already believe but also challenge our thoughts into new perspectives, and yet they fit on our bookshelves, little pent-up boxes of magic, just waiting until you choose them to blow your mind open.  I don't really understand how pages of printed word transform into something so incredible - but at times like this, I'm certainly glad they do.

Papa Doc, Graham Greene, Alan Whicker, and the Tonton Macoute

I recently finished reading Graham Greene's The Comedians and wow, what a book.  Three travellers - a hotelier, a vegetarian idealist, and a confidence man - give us our comedians of the novel, arriving in Port-au-Prince to conduct their various acts of business in the Haitian capital.  It's the mid-60s, and Haiti is in the firm grip of dictator Francois Duvalier - Papa Doc - and his undercover death squad, the Tonton Macoute.  Just two years before the novel was published, Papa Doc had declared himself President-a-vie - that is, President for life - and with the Tontons so pervasive in Haitian life, the impoverished population feared expressing any dissent, even in private.  Enter Graham Greene to do the job for them.

Greene sets the scene of a country in turmoil, spiralling out of control economically and socially.  The population live in fear, daren't go out at night, live hand-to-mouth.  Corruption is rife, with those at the top actively shaping a system that sees them get fat, whilst the rest of the country suffers in silence.  But Papa Doc is a bastion against Communism, and as such his presence is tolerated by the superpower to the north, who really don't want another Cuba on their doorstep.  Having said that, American money has all but dried up, and there is precious little to keep the crumbling infrastructure afloat - this includes the President's flagship new vanity city, Duvalierville.

Greene's portrayal of Haiti and its people is both affectionate and enduring, whilst its condemnation of the Duvalier regime is savage.  As for Papa Doc's reaction to the book?  His Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a brochure entitled Graham Greene Demasque (Graham Greene finally exposed), which described Greene as "a liar, a cretin, a stool-pigeon... unbalanced, sadistic, perverted... a perfect ignoramus… lying to his heart's content... the shame of proud and noble England... a spy... a drug addict... a torturer."  In his fascinating interview with Alan Whicker (an absorbing documentary entitled Papa Doc: The Black Sheep) Duvalier also described Greene as "mentally challenged."  So, a generally negative review then.

The Comedians has shot up to the very top of my favourite books list - it might even be the best book I've ever read - and I recommend it to everybody!

Books of my year

Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Doblin.  I'd been waiting ten years to read this, since Mum gave me a copy for Christmas in 2008. Unfortunately, that edition was all in German, but it's the thought that counts, right? I finally caught up with the first English translation after it was published last year. Well worth the wade through the stream of conciousness of one Franz Biberkopf (Google translate that one,) if you go with the flow then this'll be one of the very best books you'll ever read.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Because there are days when I just wish I was Billy Pilgrim. An amazing literary take on what it means to be alive.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.  A long-sitter on my bookshelf, but I do believe that books come to you when you're supposed to read them.  Three long days in the mountains outside Segovia, Spain, explore love, war, and sacrifice. Is anything worth it, and if so, what?

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene.  The first (but not the last) Greene novel for me, in which 50s Cuba tumbles out of every page, through the eyes of British vacuum cleaner salesman, James Wormold.  Is Greene's chaotic and comedic take on international espionage just farce, or closer to the truth than we'd like to think? Next up for me, The Comedians.

Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.  Chandler's Los Angeles is dark, gritty, lonely and unkind, but PI Philip Marlowe more than meets the challenge in his usual Bogartesque style. Something about having been to LA makes Chandler's works stand out slightly more for me.  Atmospheric.

January nights

Nobody Knows

Nobody knows what Jonjo knows. Nobody knows but he,

So Jonjo took me for a walk and showed his world to me.

I met him by the garden gate when the sun broke fresh and new.
Jonjo knows that fairies sleep on cobwebs laced with dew.

We strolled along the river's edge. It glistened in the light.
Sailing on a leafy boat, we saw a water sprite.

I followed him to forests and sank down to my knees.
Jonjo knows that wood elves meet in the hollow of old trees.

We climbed an icy mountain. Clouds drifted past our eyes.
There we spotted unicorns play chase across the skies.

I joined him at the ocean, where the mist rolled slowly in.
Jonjo knows a silver splash is the glimpse of a mermaid's fin.

He brought me to a stone cave as the sun began to fall,
to watch a dragon's shadow dance across the entrance wall.

We wandered in the starshine. An orange moon glowed bright.
Jonjo knows the man up there will keep us in his sight.

I got back home at midnight. He walked me to my door.
But as I turned to say goodbye, my Jonjo was no more.

Nobody knows what Jonjo knows. Nobody knows it's true.
So let me take you for a walk and I'll show his world to you.

Rachel Rooney

World Book Day - ten great books

1.  Goodbye to Berlin (Christopher Isherwood)
Christopher Isherwood's semi-autobiographical account of 1930s Berlin presents one man's life in a city on the brink of catastrophe.  A cast of characters, whose lives are playing out against the backdrop of the rise to power of the Nazis, this novel left behind an uncomfortable chill for the future of the protagonists, who knew not the direction they were heading.

2.  Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
"He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won Salvation for himself and his beloved."  So closes the novel on Kipling's love letter to India in this most stunning novel.  Probably my favourite ever novel, which sees young orphan Kimball O'Hara engaged in the game of Empire, whilst all the while following the lama on his quest to Enlightenment.  Deeply affectionate, tear-jerking beauty.

3.  Tintin and the Broken Ear (Hergé)

It's hard to pick a Tintin story above all others, but if pushed, I chose The Broken Ear.  The intrepid reporter takes up the case of a stolen Arumbaya fetish, meeting along the way a talking parrot, a madcap General, and a lost explorer.  Can Tintin return the stolen fetish to its museum plinth, or will he fall for one of the many replicas?  Brilliant artistry, as always, from the master cartoonist, and an interesting study of the political and economic issues of the day.

4. No Shitting in the Toilet (Peter Moore)
Excuse the profanity!  The travel guide for when you've really lost it, Peter Moore's alternative globe-trotting bible is jam-packed with utter hilarity, giving the real side of all those horrible hostels, terrible trains, and disgusting dinners, which are all part-and-parcel of a backpacker's life on the road.

5.  A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."  Hemingway's memoirs of literary life in the French capital are a joy to read, effortlessly conjuring up the atmosphere of the City of Light, in its most iconic era.

6.  Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
It's impossible to not include Treasure Island in this book list.  As an 11-year-old boy, tucked up in bed on a dark and stormy night, this adventure story leapt out of the pages.  I've read it several times since, especially after I received my Grandma's 1937 hardback edition.  A timeless classic, even if better writing was to follow with Kidnapped.

7.  Maps (Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski)
Fancied this one from the moment I first saw it in Waterstone's, until Lizzie gave it to me for Christmas.  Essentially a kids book, but one of those publications completely lost of youngsters, it's full of glorious art work showcasing the best of countries around the world.  Lovely!

8.  This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Scott Fitzgerald's unique, memorable portrayal of life at Princeton University in the years preceding the First World War.  A brilliant, precocious student, the novel tells the tale of Amory Blaine's evolution into a "personage."  Arrogance and sophistication abound, Princeton never truly forgave Fitzgerald for his version of life at the University in the early days of the Twentieth Century.

9.  The Diary of a Nobody (George and Weedon Grossmith)
Laugh-out-loud moments in this short comic novel, which was surely light-years ahead of its time, detailing the life and times of Charles Pooter, a master of misfortune.  The book sticks in my mind for the quote: "My good master shook my hand warmly as he nodded his head.  It was as much as I could do to prevent myself from crying in the 'bus: in fact, I should have done so, had my thoughts not been interrupted by Lupin, who was having a quarrel with a fat man in the 'bus, whom he accused of taking up too much room."

10.  Times Atlas of the World
Ok it's another mappy choice, but my Atlas is probably the book I treasure above all others.  How else can I go around the world in the comfort of the armchair, pore for hours over cities, oceans, mountains, and jungles, imagine, and dream.  When I was a student, I discovered that people can be broadly put into one of two categories - dictionary people, and atlas people.  Well, my Compact Oxford Dictionary is a massive help to me at work, but it pales into insignificance compared with the joys and pleasures of my beautiful Atlas.

Happy World Book Day everybody!  I hope whatever you're reading today is brilliant!

Blistering Barnacles and Thundering Typhoons! - The Tintin Factor

Those who know me will be aware that I've always held a place in my heart for the adventures of the boy reporter, Tintin.  The intrepid investigator first burst into my life when I was a kid, that iconic and dramatic "dun-dun-dun" theme tune booming out of the television, drawing you in to whatever international plot awaited.  The stories were always sophisticated, involved and utterly enthralling, and this enjoyment has never left me although, as I grew older, I started to find an equal, if not greater pleasure, through the Tintin books. A few years ago I started collecting these and, this New Year, I added the final few of books to my collection, forming a complete library of the Belgian reporter's finest investigations.

Captain Haddock and Tintin in The Secret of the Unicorn

Thomson and Thompson in Land of Black Gold

I absolutely love this series of books.  The artwork is second-to-none, phenomenal given its time, with a detail given to each and every frame that today's comic book artists could certainly learn from.  Equally important in this respect, I've collected the series in hardback, which really shows off the quality and genius of the cover art.  Now, we all know that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but these covers are simply beautiful, proper works of art in their own right, front pages that whet the appetite and invite you to delve a little deeper.

Perhaps what stands out best for me is the depth to which Hergé produced every single one of the characters, across 24 books.  And there are a lot of characters - beyond Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and Snowy lie a whole host of supporting personalities, many regulars throughout the series.  There's Interpol's finest detectives, Thomson and Thompson, criminal mastermind Rastapopoulos, Milanese opera singer Bianca Castafiore, evil dictator General Tapioca, colourful (if not drunkard) military officer General Alcazar... In fact, the list extends to nearly one hundred individuals playing out their lives in both real and fictional parts of the globe, an amazing feat of imagination on the part of the author, created to fit Tintin's adventures into a more realistic world.  Indeed, of all the series' characters, it is Tintin himself that is perhaps the most beige.  As Harry Thompson, radio and TV producer, novelist, and author of Hergé and His Creation said: 

"Tintin is almost featureless, ageless, sexless, and did not appear to be burdened with a personality.  Yet this very anonymity remains the key to Tintin's gigantic international success.  With so little to mark him out, anybody from Curaçao to Coventry can identify with him and live out his adventures..."

The result of this undeniably genius casting makes for brilliant viewing or, as I'm now finding out, brilliant reading, for children and adults alike.  And what better what to escape the drab, cold January evenings than to slip into a world of exotic adventure and intrigue?

A hero's parade in Tintin in America

A plane crash and a missing friend takes Tintin to Tibet

So, what are the origins of this wonderful adventure series?  Well the reporter's creator, Georges Remi - Hergé - was employed as an illustrator at Le Vingtieme Siecle, a Belgian newspaper based not far from Brussels.  Hergé rose to be appointed editor of the Thursday youth supplement, but soon became dissatisfied with his role, and started his own cartoon strip instead, adapting the new innovation of speech balloons to depict words coming out of the characters' mouths.  Hergé already had experience with creating comic strips, having written Les Adventures de Totor, about a boy scout with a strong resemblance to Tintin.  Tintin as we know him first came to print in 1929, when Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was serialised.  Hergé had wanted to send his new hero to America, but was ordered by newspaper boss, Abbe Norbert Wallez, to send Tintin to the Soviet Union, to provide anti-socialist propaganda for the right-wing newspaper.  The cartoon proved popular, and so more stories followed - Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear, The Black Island, then King Ottokar's Sceptre were all serialised and released in black-and-white before the outbreak of a Second World War that would change the direction of Tintin forever.  What happened then, and what happened afterwards, will be the subject of a future blog.

Totor, sometimes referred to as "Tintin's younger brother"

Tintin meets a lifelong friend in The Crab with the Golden Claws

So that's my collection complete and, as with so many of my interests, it's a collection that has a free history lesson thrown in for good measure!  Now I'm sure I know all the stories off by heart already, but there's no harm in revisiting some classics, so if anybody wants me, I'll be in the reading chair...

Book Review: The Beautiful and Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel presents a haunting portrayal of New York's wealthy but rootless generation emerging out of the First World War.  Anthony Patch, the grandson of tycoon millionaire Adam Patch, lives only in the pursuit of wealth and pleasure.  On one of his many social events, he meets the selfish and supremely beautiful Gloria Gilbert, the cousin of a close friend.  Gloria is simultaneously wise and naive; at times she exhibits almost child-like behaviour, but her string of previous relationships hints at a girl with a jaded outlook on the world.

As the years turn, so beauty fades and so the incompatibilities in Anthony and Gloria's relationship become more and more exposed.  Only when under the influence of liquor, at their increasingly common parties, are Anthony and Gloria happy, but even this emotion can only be sustained for so long, as finances dry up, friendships fade, and marriage reaches breaking-point.  Then, when old Adam Patch dies, his fortune becomes the sole ambition of their sordid and empty marriage.

The Beautiful and Damned is a moody and atmospheric portrayal of early Twentieth Century New York and a nation awakening from its slumber to find its place as an emerging superpower.  Said to be influenced by Fitzgerald's own torrid marriage, the novel charts the destructive obsession with wealth and decadence that gripped a unique class of people - a class with no direction, no identity, no ambition and, ultimately, no hope.

The Beautiful and Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

First published in March 1922 by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, USA.

The Queen of Crime's Torbay (Part Three)

A few weeks ago, Lizzie and I ventured out onto the River Dart to visit Greenway, Agatha Christie's holiday home.  The estate is reached by an hour-long ferry ride from Totnes, quite picturesque in the summer sunshine.  With each passing minute on board, you get the feeling that you are heading deeper and deeper into the Devon countryside, the cities and motorways of Britain melting away into the calmly lapping water and birdsong of an unchanged landscape. 

Scenes on the River Dart

 
Agatha Christie and her second husband Max Mallowan bought the Greenway Estate in 1938 on the sale of her childhood home, Ashfield.  She would later describe it as "the loveliest place in the world."  Greenway was the inspiration for her books Dead Man's Folly and Five Little Pigs.  Disembarking, we waste no time in climbing the hill to the estate - we only have three hours before the ferry takes us back again - and we are soon strolling the beautiful grounds.  To me, it's like a wonderful hideaway, somehow very separate from everywhere else, a private paradise in which to enjoy life.  I can see how a writer would thrive here.

National Trust Sign

Greenway House

Inside the house, where photography is forbidden, the rooms are large but homely.  What I didn't realise was that the family were such big fans of collecting - the rooms of Greenway are full of objects, artefacts and curiosities with no apparent theme.  I particularly enjoyed the archaeological aspect to some of the books and exhibits (Max Mallowan was, afterall, a prominent archaeologist who specialised in the Middle East), and the library, which comes complete with a frieze painted by a US Navy officer in 1943.

The library and frieze (scanned from a National Trust postcard)

The inner hall (scanned from a National Trust postcard)

Fascinating though the house is, for me the real jewel of this National Trust property is the grounds.  In the sunshine it is a pleasure to explore the borders and greenhouses, kept wonderfully and colourfully by the gardeners.  It is all too easy to imagine this place fifty years ago on a peaceful summer afternoon, a couple playing tennis on the walled court, or practicing croquet on the lawn.

Scenes from Greenway's gardens

So, what is the final opinion of this Agatha Christie newbie?  As someone who has never pursued an interest in her before, I must say that I'm converted.  Delving into her life, seeing so many local places that were her literal inspiration, exploring a tiny piece of her world, has given me an appetite for more.  Last week at Torquay Museum I bought one of her books - Murder on the Orient Express.  Over the next week or two I'm going to settle down and read it, and report back here with my review.  If I like it - and I hope I will - it could be the first of many Agatha Christie novels I enjoy.

Dame Agatha Christie 1890-1976.  Thank you for sharing with us a piece of your world.