Lookee

Subtitled: I should not be allowed into a bookshop unattended.

Lost: A reading list

I was going to open this post with one of two desperate leads: a quote or a joke. Except the quote was more of an accusation and the joke is still not funny, and even I could smell the desperation like the tang of my own unbrushed breath at five in the afternoon. Instead, I am beginning with this slightly less desperate (but not quite minty fresh) self-reflexive apology. I am just out of practice. Be glad I didn't sink to starting with "The dictionary defines...".

So, how is Lost (the TV series) like a TS Eliot poem? (See, I warned you the joke isn't funny.)

With its very first word, Eliot's epic The Wasteland introduces itself as a friend of the great-grandfather of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer. The poem ends with guttural syllables that sound like a baby's first swings at speaking or the phonics of Chaucer's early English, but are to those in the know Buddhist principles laid out in the text Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

Like The Wasteland, Lost is a catalogue of our times and texts that conspire to make the average viewer feel somewhat below average.

To start with, many of the characters in Lost are named after philosophers. For example, there is Danielle Rousseau, a French women driven mad by her isolation on the island, who is named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he of the 'noble savage'. Desmond Hume, a Scotsman trying to prove his love for a woman he dumped in an act of inexplicable cowardice, is named after David Hume, the philosopher who wrestled causality away from God himself.

These characters act out their brands of social philosophy and metaphysics against plots, ideas and symbols dragged from stories as varied (but still mostly predictable) as Alice in Wonderland, Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies and the Bible.

But most of this background belongs to other blogposts (suppress your joy at learning the extent of my obsession with this very obsession-worthy series). This post is about the books that the characters are seen reading in different episodes, specifically those read by the character Sawyer, himself named after the tween adventurer written by Mark Twain. The director and camera-man go to great lengths to show the covers and titles of the books, so we might as well make these lengths worthwhile by reading some of them. Or, at least, planning to.

However, this list constitutes a promise to read these books, which is why it is not a quintessential list. I left off the books I don't want to read.

• The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. The idea for this list started when Desmond Hume puts aside the copy he is reading to discover the madness that is the character named John Locke. I noticed because, instead of using a bookmark like a civilised reader, he sits it down spreadeagled, thereby damaging the spine as well as bending the pages. The author was contemporary and countryman of James Joyce, which bodes both well and ill for this book.
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Sawyer is reading this book when he starts to have severe migraines and Jack diagnoses him as hyperopic - as a result of reading so much. As the title suggests, the novel is an adventure in time travel, in which a young girl and her brother have to rescue their scientist father.
• Lancelot by Walter Percy. Kate interrupts Sawyer as he is reading this book to ask for a gun. The book is about a man who blows up his house and murders his wife, much like Kate did her father.
• Bad Twin by Gary Troup. This book was written for Lost: it is the unpublished manuscript of one of the casualties of Oceanic 815.
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Sawyer is reading this novel in a flashback to his time spent in prison, proving that Sawyer was a closet bibliophile before being stranded on a tropical island with excess time on his hands. You know, when he isn't struggling to survive.
• Watership Down by Richard Adams. Sawyer is reading this when the former owner of the copy accuses him of hiding his sister's asthma pumps, which were in the same suitcase. Sawyer doesn't have them, but only reveals this after a beating and a kiss. The novel is also an animated movie, mere stills from which bring tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Which is the same reaction I have to the last two episodes of Lost.
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. This novel appears twice, in two separate episodes, suggesting it takes some time to finish even if you have all the time in the world. I just know this book is going to rile me up. I can feel it like a static force field surrounding the book.
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce. This novel is one of a shelf of books in the hatch that Locke is alphabetising. In it, a man time travels just before he dies. Sounds like a sure winner. 

In the fifth season of Lost, Jack asks why Sawyer is sitting and reading a book instead of making decisions and taking action. Sawyer says what we all want to say, just more succinctly: that he is thinking, rather than reacting, as Jack did when he was in charge. That, my friends, is why we should all be readers.

PS. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens gets its own list. Our dear Des plans to read this book before he dies - as in just before he dies, rather than at some point before he dies - because obviously these things can be planned. This is also one of the few books that I have started and never finished. A list that is growing longer and longer, I'm afraid.

Show pigeons are walking existential crises, if you think about it

I am suffering a dry streak, my friends. Dry as all those rivers that were dammed to make dams because some committee wanted a dam and be damned the ecosystem. Dry as the absence of vowels in the word. I can't find anything good to read. And I don't mean 'good' as is literature, but I don't mean cult classic either. I have been abandoned by books I actually want to read.

In the not-too-distant past there has been The Passage and Night Film and Mara and Dann. But search back through these archives (maybe you will find something more interesting back there) and see that they are segregated by months. Years, maybe? Possibly. Probably. Perhaps - no, definitely - I am being melodramatic, but see, this is how I count my days, months and years. This is how I catalogue my memories.

A show pigeon

I don't think: "In February last year, I sat outside on a bench and watched a show pigeon trying to be a dove while I wrote." I think "A hardcover Kurt Vonnegut was on the table and I was listening to Ben Howard. It was windy, a cold wind, but I liked being outside." Before this, I had read Fahrenheit 451, which although I don't talk about it much is one of my favourites. It is a lonely book, as any book set in a policed dystopia must be. I had read it sitting on my bed between naps.

Some of my collection of must-I-finishes? includes A Widow for a Year by John Irving, The Luminaries by Elenor Catton and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Even before I finish the first sentence, I am on the tracks of my own stories, the book held in front of me like a disguise - rendered useless by the fact I am alone. Since I am being picky now, the author needs to go big or go home. I want a plot that knocks on my breastbone and yells that he will huff and puff if I don't give him my heart to chow on.

Metaphorically. Of course. Definitely. I mean, who doesn't love the bolschy character who is a bit of a bully but who also has a heart that tells him when to use it?

I had to think for a moment to remember what I am technically theoretically and painfully reading now. A Canticle for Leibowitz. One of the big bloopers in The Passage was that nothing had decayed much 100 years later. The ragtag team ate dented cans of peaches. Electricity grids still ran, albeit failingly. Did you know that the acid in modern paper actually makes it less durable? Books made of paper from the last century or so will crumble sooner.

Did you also know that in 1000 years, men in habits will be finding receipts and to-do lists hoarded in a time capsule where nothing else has survived time? And - oh this is my favourite - that all of human knowledge will disappear into warring factions of Neanderthals, in which women are once again just wet nurses. And that we will be forced to walk with a silly man in a brown habit who we cannot love even as a baby brother who likes to recite poetry he doesn't understand.

It would make sense if you read it. But don't. Let me finish and tell you at length how awful it is. My version will be a better read.

But this is not a dystopian novel and so there is light. A flickering solar light, maybe, or the slow beam of a long-dead star. I borrowed and started reading The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. Not a recommended read, unless you enjoy pirouetting on a pinhead that is an idea with far too many rust spots to be appealing.

You know (yes, you know) that in my roving mind, ideas are important. Critical in fact. Stories of what we might do when the ties of society are loosened are vital, because that is who are, isn't it? How else can we understand ourselves as moral beings? How else can I understand myself? (That is hypothetical, because I don't and I am not sure I believe people who say they do.) Right now, steam is exploding from my nose and ears like a cartoon bull, at the frustration of being and of knowing. These are the kinds of stories I tell myself when I am pretending to read.

Umberto Eco is a true polymath, like Noam Chomsky: he is an expert in so many specialised areas of study that to call him a generalist is also inaccurate. I am in awe and jealous of the man, who by my age had probably already written two books and disproved a host of flawed ideas. I am also embarrassed (as if he were standing in front of me) by how little I have achieved. 

To take another hammer to my street cred, I only read Name of the Rose after my literature degree. Just before this, I had read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

Aside, because now I know I must write a post on translations: Pamuk's writing is beautiful and made more beautiful by the strangeness (in the literal sense) of the culture, history and language. In this book, the culture is the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Marat III and a murder mystery than circles the scribes in his employ.  The novel binds itself around notions of representation and art. For example, is it art if it is mimicry? It posits that a piece of work is a form of immortality - but is it? What about those sculptures sitting in museums that we can't identify? Is that a legacy?

Name of the Rose touches on so many of the same themes, extending my experience of both novels so that they seem sort of magical (and you know I am not one to use these words lightly. Except when I am making fun. Which is often, but not now). The novel is set in a monastery in Italy, about 150 years before My Name is Red, there is also a murder mystery and the monks are also scribes. While the Ottoman scribes are also working in service of their faith, they enjoy beauty and their craft for craft's sake. Both sets of works are decadent, but the Italians are more repressed and conflicted. Probably not as repressed as the British.

In Eco's world, art does not exist for art's sake. In Pamuk's world, art for art's sake is still a form of worship. When I think of the latter, I think of rich reds and blues. When I think of the former, I think of cool golds and greens.

This venture off-the-beaten-track was not meant to be The Point, but is somehow still is The Point. (Despite what people tell you, haphazard meetings are usually more useful than laid-out plans.) The Island of the Day Before reminds me why I love to read. Why I am mostly Reader, some Writer and a fraction of other stuff that I lost years ago and am still looking for. (If you find it, keep it - I clearly don't need it.)

Books are my religion. I mean that in a quasi-blasphemy way. Most people believe in the things that they can see and touch, and that they exist, which leads to a comfortable belief that the world exists as a place with meaning. I however am an extra in The Matrix but I am very conscious of all the set pieces. Metaphorically. Where the set pieces form a dangerous a chain of existential corkscrews. Which means the 'I' that is me is usually very confused and a confused animal is an edgy one.

Books are the antidote. A novel is made-up - the story finds a way to exist in a candyland of wirly-girglies without having to touchdown. (That is just how confusing life feels to me.) It is made of words that never promise they are real but can be content in being this in-between thing. Ideas, too, are multi-coloured strands that can be strung out further, tied up and then untied. They make space and time in which to be examined, and don't hassle me to make a decision every time I put a key in my front door to unlock it.

If you are the kind of person who reads the conclusion first, this post is not about a single novel at all. But intention is nine-tenths of meaning, so know that I meant to and then got carried away. By which I mean I meant to do that, but you need not read it. I don't think this post was meant to be read; I just needed to write it.

The list of magnanimity

Dear reader, have you been paying attention? Have you? Here's a test: do I prefer chocolate or strawberry ice cream? You could answer: by 'I' do you mean the tapper of keys behind this blog or the one who just took a sip of coffee? When in doubt always answer a question with a question. (Just one of the many nuggets I have pilfered from The Office.)

That's not the test. The answer is obvious: chocolate. We'll tackle this later. Now, the real test is whether you have noticed that I have been speeding through some of the classics and some of the strawberry-flavoured books in my local library. Your reply? Should I have noticed? You learn well, my young padawan.

My number one survival strategy is lists, whether written down and colour-coded or mental and therefore quickly lost. This is core to my zombie apocalypse slash hunger games strategy, so I will tell you only that it involves post-its and a tree.

Anyway, last post I abused Borges' library, a really innocuous building that happens to have swallowed all eternity. Which should be paradise for us bibliophiles. (Dibs on 'F' in the fiction section. Ok, fine, 'M' then.) It isn't. It is terrifying. You've heard about the marketing study where they found that too much choice actually drives consumers away. And every salesperson knows to only give a person three options and to place the option that gives you a higher commission first.

The scale of published fiction in the last 100 years is like counting the human population since we first started practising pressing the buttons of video games with our thumbs. Confining the headcount to literary fiction, I mumble guiltily, still doesn't help. This isn't a choice between different scents of floor cleaner (FYI, no scent, especially not made-up ones like Bright Sunshine), no, this is literature!

This eternal library is a case of survival. Instead of killing zombies and other children, we must read everything. That's an exaggeration, you snort (I can hear you, through the microphone, so be please be polite about my bibliophilic delusion).

In the absence of chocolate and strawberry coloured stickers along the spines to guide my quest, I have made a list. Ok, many lists and some were colour-coded. Some are stuck on my fridge but are so faded and blotched with coffee stains you can't read them, others are pinned to a ribbon knotted onto my bedroom door handle, and some are lost in the right hemisphere of my brain, because that's where lost and found is.

The winners of this game are the titles posted on this blog, to the right >>, and those saved on my phone. The one occasion I deviated from this list ended badly, not in a zombie bite, but in disappointment. Point proven; lists are the key to survival. Also, apparently, technology.

Now that I have distracted you from the impending reappearance of the Dreaded List on this blog, here is a condensed list of my approved reads (and future reviews), gleaned mostly from the internet (the most trustworthy, obviously) and recommendations (a mixed bag, except for the ones on FB, obviously):

• 1Q84 by Haruki Marukami (unread; alternate history) I think I've bored you enough with my ravings about this and Kafka on the Shore. That's why bloggers use labels (below right)
• Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (unread; cross-genre) having read a couple of his other novels, I wouldn't rank him above David Mitchell in this category, but then I don't think many short of James Joyce could
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (read; dystopian) the character of the girl at the beginning cinched this novel for me, although I wasn't so thrilled with the book-burning
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (unread; literary) I hereby admit that I have never read this classic novel
• A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (unread; post-modern look how smart I am) we studied A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I hated it for exactly the same reason others adore it: the the iconoclastic, self-conscious self-deprecation, but I'm willing to give him another go. I'm magnanimous like that
• The Maddadam books by Margaret Atwood (two of three read; apocalyptic) post in proximity, so work, you
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson Mccullers (unread; literary) I'm magnanimous but not perfect. I hate Mccullers just a teensy bit because she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which is beautiful, at 23. Pure jealousy. I will read this but I will feel sorry for myself the entire time, so prepare yourselves
• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain (read; noir fiction) only 116 pages but perfectly paced. I don't usually enjoy crime novels but this was a satisfying, meaty use of the conventions
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (unread; satire) I have faith but I need it because I read Cat's Cradle recently. It is a few marbles short of Philip K Dick's drug-fuelled novels. So, yes, I need it
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein (partly read; science fiction) the beginning reminds me of A Brave New World, although I can't say why. Also reminds me of the soundtrack to Lost Boys: "People are strange when you're a stranger"

My closest library loans out books for two weeks at a time. That gives me 16 weeks to finish all eight of the unread books. But don't worry, I'll sneak in some unexpected reviews just to see if you've been paying attention. You.

The Year of the Flood

On a shelf in Borges's library is a box. (Ok, there are many shelves and many boxes maybe even many libraries). This shelf and box is the one on your right. The other right. No, no, his left. Three-hundred-and-sixty degrees from her right. Dammit, you lost it. Nevermind; we'll get another box and label it in permanent marker. Underneath I will write: "You, the reader, lost the first box" and I will tie it to you with rope that scratches the inside of your wrist.

So I write (stop crowding me) "Literary Science-Fiction". But the letters are small and there is a space to the right and below as if something should follow. This isn't necessarily significant: writing in permanent marker on an object is as difficult as writing in a straight line with chalk. Into this box we tip Margaret Atwood, followed by the world and her husband because nerds are the cool kids right now. Which is, in its own way, a blip in the multi-verse.

Ms Atwood hates the label on the box, and not just because of the handwriting. I don't know her personally, but in a way I do, because I follow her on Twitter. I know she hates the label because I would too (as confirmed by a Gargoyle search). It's not because the label suggests that science fiction is lowbrow. It's because writers don't like boxes. We imagine that we live around the box, spending our days decorating it with warning signs, like the Borrowers in The Borrowers but more cynical.

I bet the marketing department adore that label. I bet they invented it. I also bet (I'm going to be rich) that they adore that she hates the label. They hand her buttons and glue to make pretty patterns on the wall of the nearest box, and she looks at them and paces the length of said box dropping buttons along the way. And they cheer. Because, you see, we're all in boxes with boxes stacked on our heads and around our arms like bangles. We need boxes because otherwise we would suffocate in the chaos of the universe. Trust me on this.

Why am I taking Ms Atwood in and out of the box and giving her buttons to drop like breadcrumbs? You guessed it! I just finished The Year of the Flood. Now, you know reading about books is only worthwhile if we meander down hillocks and over rivers, because otherwise, you could just spend the time reading the book. You have also guessed the Ms Atwood and I have 'a history', albeit one she knows nothing about even though I follow her on Twitter.

The first book of hers that I read was Oryx and Crake, which is part of a set of three (not a trilogy, no; more like a puzzle but not all the pieces match) including The Year of the Flood. I was a bookseller and I bought it on sale because I had heard the surname Atwood whispered among my learned friends but mostly because it is a deckle-edged, first-edition hardcover.

I disliked the book at the time. Her writing style is precise, almost minimalistic, and so much is left buried under the rubble of disaster, because it is easier than digging it out and discovering that what you have your hand is a child's shoe. Or so I thought. I was quick to believe the worst because I needed some boxes. Or shoes. Anything to hold in my hands. This easy disdain festered until I wasn't sure how I felt about the book. Or the author.

Next I read The Blind Assassin and the The Handmaid's Tale. Neither of which I can remember. Here she buried me with boxes, took them away, put them back the wrong way up and dowsed them in water. I'd had it! By now, you and I know that protest is a sure sign that you have trampled on something you care about. Still, Oryx and Crake festered. By now, I thought the book was ok, maybe even good, perhaps by some fluke. Sometimes authors write things by accident. Although I have not experienced this.

Now we get to the actual topic. Eight paragraphs later. Honestly, you have travelled further in search of My Point before, so no whinging.

The Year of the Flood, as I mentioned is part of a set, with Oryx and Crake and Maddadam. Like Oryx and Crake, the book is narrated from just after the apocalypse, although most of the book is a reflection on events before it. Yes, this is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel and I said I would give you a break from this, but this is what's cool. Yo. Now button up your plaid and appreciate.

The first third (and I am being kind here) is no less confusing than Oryx and Crake, because both jump from person to place to time without always being specific. But the narrative of The Year of the Flood does even out. Characters begin to reappear consistently, as do places, and mostly in chronological order. It is almost as though the author is teasing us with the character Ren, withholding so much and then releasing it like the wall of a dam. (Get it? Dam... Flood. Har!)

This worked for me better than the unceasing teasing of Oryx and Crake. I was pulled along by the main characters, sympathising and even empathising with them, even when things got damn right weird and the characters seemed to have switched personalities with people not even in the novel. Even now I have soft spots for Ren and Toby, although the spots for Amanda and the boys are small. They have to balance on the sole of one foot.

But The Year of the Flood is not festering like Oryx and Crake did. It has found its place on my shelf and I would loan it out because it is a good book and you should read it. The narrative and characters are fixed, while those of Oryx and Crake swirl around like milk that never turns into cheese, not even blue cheese. Then again, perhaps I am judging it too soon. Perhaps it will sizzle rather than swirl or fester. Perhaps it will only be complete when I read Maddadam.

So, it's on my shelf - they're on my shelf, because it fits into a bunch of different boxes. I didn't intend this (I swear), even though I started off on a rant about genre, but none of my comments have anything to do with the label. What sold me on The Year of the Flood were the characters and what haunts me about Oryx and Crake is the discontinuity of the narrative. No mention of rubble or shoes or carnivorous pigs. Until now. Surprise!

Now I dare you to pick up all the boxes (use the muscles in your legs - yes, like that) and distribute them around the library. I won't yell at you this time or chain you to anything. I only did that the first time to see if you'd let me, oh passive reader you.

Orbiting The Swan Thieves

There should be space in the title The Swan Thieves for a joke about how the book stole hours of my life. See, it's too far out of orbit. Also, I feel a bit mean saying that - it's a bit harsh and I could have chosen to steal my time back. Am I a sop? I am overthinking again, wasting more precious time, but this is why you love me. Well, you would if you met me. What does my foible have to do with a joke that spins in a wide orbit?

Scientifically, the joke couldn't sweep too far an orbit from the book (which we're assuming is the centre of the system), because once it moved out of the centre's 'range', it would careen into space like an asteroid. So either: the joke is skimming the very edge of the book's sphere of influence or it is floating around, unconnected with anything.

More time, floating away.

Luckily this ramble careens us back into orbit: The Swan Thieves is, like its predecessor The Historian, an unconventional mystery. In Elizabeth Kostova's first novel, we chased the legend of Dracula - at arm's length because the sources of this legend are prone to mutilating people and I am squeamish. In her second release, I think the mystery is a painter's obsession with a woman who lived more than 100 years ago. He has a psychotic meltdown, tries to destroy a painting and then refuses to speak.

Because, obviously, all artists are, to put it nicely, crazy. (You'd hate to know what other words come to mind.) Obviously. The painter is a nicely rounded set of stereotypes, which is actually a relief from the painful touchy-feely-ness of the other characters and the unethical absurdities of a teacher hooking up with a student (I suspect because he needed food and shelter), and a psychiatrist marrying his patient's ex-girlfriend. Oh and so much more that I can't reveal without spoiling the plot.

I said, "I think" because halfway through the mystery shifts, although honestly I don't know where it went, nor do I really care. The mystery petered out, without a single vampire swishing around in the shadows. Imagine, an Impressionistic painting chasing you through a psychiatric hospital. Not a Cuckoo's Nest hospital but a clean and accommodating one. When you turn around, there is nothing behind you except for a hint of a frame and the flash of a brushstroke in the moonlight.

Maybe I'm biased by The Historian, and this novel isn't meant to be creepy. (Although, as I mentioned, it is creepy in other ways.) Maybe it is meant appeal to to readers of a more sensitive disposition, who are moved to tears by flowers blooming and children bullying each other on a playground. Maybe they fancy they are the epitome of another artist stereotype: the delicate waif writing dedications to urns and then dying. Poetically. Tragically.

Again, I feel I am being glib. At about 90% of the way through the book were a few pages in which I felt the author extended the promise of her first novel: her descriptions were more focused and so more was left to the reader's imagination. My glibness is a product of my disappointment in a novel of the same breeding of The Historian and with this potential. (This novel was more a book-club read than serious literary fiction, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, because the writing catches you in its orbit and doesn't spend time describing your fellow jokes' eyebrows in epic poems first.)

The novel also reminded me of how much I used to enjoy painting and drawing. I even went out and bought a set of pencils. (Which has been opened and the pencils touched, you. Once. But once more than in 13 years.) So, despite my whinging about the amount of adjectives and adverbs and nonsense, some of it had an effect on this reader.

Recitation complete. No questions. We have all wasted enough time. I have appointments to keep: being chased down the corridors of a hospital and waning over a desk piteously. Eventually I'll have to choose one stereotype, I suppose.

Also, I'm distracted, dear reader. First, I have just started The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which I have been eyeing for years and found two days ago in a secondhand bookshop I often go to. On the one hand, the novel was originally written in Italian by a professor in particle physics; on the other hand, the first few chapters are underwhelming - not one paradox or brain-popping theorem or just the number 15 (my favourite). Let's bet on my final ruling. Because I am completely objective, I will be the bookie.

Second, I want to post about Ayn Rand's Anthem, but this is a heady topic, and my head is still annoyed. I used to look down on people who take her philosophies so seriously. I understand. Oh, I understand. Maybe you want to read it before my next post and you can share my annoyance. (If you empathise though, stay away. Only kidding. Let's discuss this and then someone will hold you down and I will smack you (I may need a few tries - my arms are my weak spot).)

I think we left orbit a while back.

Doris Lessing, 1919-2013

A dull yellow (impersonating gold) trade paperback, in library-grade plastic and accompanying Dewy-decimal-system label on the spine. This was when I first met Ms Doris Lessing. (Disclaimer: it was not The Grass is Singing, because a BA degree is an overdose in colonial and post-colonial fiction. Even Gabriel Garcia Marquez is tainted by my grand nemesis The Heart of Darkness - Mr Achebe, while I'm with you about the layers upon layers - no, actually, just one deep layer - of racism, it is also one deeper layer of boring.)

The Golden Notebook. My first handshake with Ms Lessing. Not literally. Read above, please. Read the title. Focus!

I was about 20, in my gap year between one degree and the next, naively contemplating the theme of my adult life (naively because, as you know, dear reader, that theme snaps at your heels, accuses you, does back flips and takes your spot on the couch endlessly - right? Or is this just me?).

In brief (this book is anything but brief), the novel is comprised of five, different coloured (not literally, fool) notebooks and a binding story set in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman named Anna Wulf, living in London. (For those who know Ms Lessing's own story or have the power to Google, the plot(s) resonate.)

The book was written in 1962. We could ascribe the politics of the novel to the time - and this probably didn't hurt sales - but these themes could be traced back to the novel of the singing grass and Ms Lessing's liberal but tempered temperament. The themes (of both novels) include feminism and socialism (loaded terms, but that's why there's Wikipedia (again, encyclopaedia is spelt with an 'a', open source dorks).

Even as a teenager, perhaps even a tot, I have gravitated toward these liberal movements - I shudder as I type 'liberal' - literature tells me liberals are too impassioned to be rational, misguided and unfocused, appealing to human nature rather than the greed, envy, lust and basic selfishness that natural selection rewards. Trust me, I went to a politicised university and have seen two riots. Wait, now I'm a voyeuristic, liberalesque pseudo-intellectual. Still, call me a liberal and I will... moderate your comment. You.

The novel stalks the measure of the terms - from the perspective of the times, obviously; I later learnt more about the revolutions before and after (and no I'm not talking about #Occupy-a-park) - setting my principles in some sort of shape, like water in an ice block (just way more haphazard). Feminism was the one that immediately appealed to me. Given that a comment about women drivers is still enough to incite me to violence - or wait, my favourite "She's a smart cookie." Do I look like a gingerbread woman?

Today, when I think about the novel, some shadow of the experience of reading projects on the back of my head. Of sitting on a forest-green couch in a room painted yellow. Of the view from a kitchen window of a London street. The aura of importance that being involved in grand ideas provokes. Of a mother and her children, with the realisation that a child is a separate being to her. Of gritted teeth as a man, of common mind, tells a woman what feminism means.

None of these are necessarily written in the book - but they are what I see when when I think of it. They are a set of first dates with the world around ideas I thought were mine. A world which the mass media do not quite grasp.

Ms Lessing passed away about two months ago. The literary world is reeling. AS Byatt and Margaret Atwood have written tributes to her. Did you know she won the Nobel Prize for Literature five years ago? Did you know she had the same effect on me as touching a bell as it swings? Why is the whole world not reeling?

I had ordered two of her novels online and they were delivered the day before she passed: Mara and Dann and The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. Predictably (for me) they are dystopian novels, predictably (for her) written to explore political and social issues. Reading them feels like a ritual honouring her and her effect on me. What else will she teach me? What other ideas will she help me shape?

Doris Lessing was one of the greats, unassuming but influential. This post is my tribute to her and acknowledgement of her influence on me. And an assuaging of my guilt. I confess I have undervalued the author over the last few years. Read my archives and she doesn't appear, except as a passing reference. As often happens, it has taken her death and the reeling of my world to make me appreciate Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook.

Footnote: Stay posted (har!) for reviews of Mara and Dann and its sequel. I will try to keep the soppy to a minimum.

The Bourne Identity

Coincidentally and before I begin (because what is an hour of blogging without the joy of making you suffer for my art), I started reading We are Now Beginning our Descent last night. It's written by James Meek, that Meek who rocked my world in People's Act of Love (no sighing!) and then whipped up some blinding dust with Drivetime. That Meek. Review pending so check back regularly. Please.

The main character describes his forthcoming novel (they're all interminably forthcoming, aren't they? It's like a separate genre) to a "socialist Scottish [and drunk] poet":

"It would subvert the genre by making America the enemy - not a group within America, but the American government, the American majority and the American way [yay, no Oxford comma!]. American characters would be portrayed as cliched, two-dimensional, ignorant caricatures, while their European counterparts would be wisecracking, genuine, courageous..."

And here, folks, you have an introduction that breaks all the rules. Consider it a prologue, an epilogue, maybe even epigraph. Or just a really bad introduction justified by literary terms that make it difficult for you to say so without looking stupid. Either way, I did it on purpose. Yep.

Onwards. To slide seamlessly into the book isolated in the title of this post: The Bourne Identity is not that novel. The book is a spy thriller (if you haven't watched the movies with Matt Damon 2.0 except better than the original), written in the 80s. America in the 80s was a mirror of the 2000's: run by a Bush, hostile towards the Middle East as suited them and proudly materialistic.

Or so says History.com. I dunno, I was only just born. All I remember is the fashion. *shudder* Best only resurrected as a memory.

In this example of  popular literature, the Middle East and Russia - sorry, Soviet Union - are noticeable only by their absence. The Vietnam War does feature, as the heinous crime it was, as does South America. You see, the enemy is 'Latin' and the protagonist recognises him only by his dark skin. (Apparently there are no other 'dark-skinned' people in Europe, at least not in the 80s.) So add subtle racism to the list.

The American government gets some left-wing *%$# thrown at it - the novel even satirises a meeting of the intelligence elite, but absolves them later through traitorous violence. The object of the tirade then shifts to a single American group and later a single American man. The Europeans...? Mostly deceitful, playing a game many centuries old, that Americans have no place interfering with.

And the real enemy? One man, manipulating a network of assassins, messengers and crude murderers. I always find this idea, like the Illuminati, fascinating. How? Just how? Maybe, to continue the theme, the man represents the fear of people, individuals, all around us. This man could be anyone. Although, as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. (This man, though, is not that man. He is objectively the personification of evil. Obviously. I mean, he's 'dark', right?)

I'm not perfect either, though: I am slipping into harsh reviewer mode, because destroying is easier than creating.

It is easy to see why the novel is popular. I confess I was caught up in the idea of Europe as the playground of spy games and the romance of two beautiful people, with imagining myself as this brilliant strategist whom others envy and whom these same others are afraid of. The action moves fluidly (though the plot is a bit more porous) and there are different types of action. All good. After all, escapism is the objective of a novel like this.

But, to slip back into reviewer mode, the other thing I cannot stomach is the portrayal of the female character. She is strong in one sense: she is an economist and her insight becomes crucial to Bourne's strategies. But she is also what literary snobs (like myself) call a 'Madonna figure'. (I have this image of Bourne clutched to her bosom like the prophesied child in the Pieta. Yikes. But that's essentially what the metaphor comes down to.)

She is supportive, fine; imagine her arm is slung across his back, his arm on her shoulders (as it is at one point. He recovers remarkably quickly). Creepily supportive; see above. She has Stockholm Syndrome; in the first portion of the novel, he spends a lot of time threatening and beating her with a gun to her head. She believes in his goodness; even though he spends a lot of time before the novel as a crazy, gun-toting mourner in the jungle. And she is beyond moral approach and naive; no evidence here except her patronising and whiney appeals to him to believe in himself.

But I am reading to much into it (pun!). I mean, this isn't We are Now Beginning our Descent. Although I am only 50 pages into it, I am caught up in the author's self-reflection, the meaningless of war and how we cope with trauma. The main characters are rounded out by what they don't say and why they say what they say, whether male or female (granted, the main character is male, so the perspective is slightly skewed). It isn't People's Act of Love, but so far, it's engaging and escapist.

(See, I'm not a total snob. Well, I am, but I can justify it.)

The definition of futility

Stupidity or futility? Sometimes they're the same thing - but not synonyms. Maybe just cousins so far removed that the only have one gene in common anymore: ginger hair or astigmatism or bad taste in men. They never meet (in the dictionary) but they are unwittingly reunited here. Not by me.

No, they are being reunited by the most powerful book in English literature.

It's also long, but definitely not the longest. Agaat and Song of Fire and Ice, even in Kindle form, were weights that strained my thumb and index finger. Crime and Punishment literally bruised the web between those two fingers. Google is indecisive (personification intended, because none of us are responsible for our statements here, right) about the longest novels, and they all hurdle the 1 000 page mark as if this were the Olympics. On the podium are Proust, Ayn Rand, Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace. I genuinely think they haven't accounted for Ms Marlene van Niekerk.

Now I'm purposefully stringing you along, because I anticipate your doubt, your accusations of hubris, your dire prophesies, and your own stories about stupidity and futility.

Suspense cut like a ribbon around a statue: I am about to read all 4 000 pages of In Search of Lost Time by Michel Proust. Nah, not really. Ribbon still intact. The title is deceptive (I'm thinking dinosaurs here), but apparently a lot of nothing happens except a brief affair, perhaps unconsummated.

Now, really, scissors in hand and no glue. Ulysses by Joyce. Ribbon is taken up by wind and blown into the crowd. James Joyce. He deserves that Bond-esque calling card.

I received this copy for my birthday and tried twice to read it. The first time, I confess, I understood nothing, except something about milk, a dog, and two poorer and wealthier college boys who are friends. I wanted to believe in this book. I want the anecdotal character of the man to be alive in his books. I believe in the Modernists, with an indefinable emotion best represented in the cave of Passage to India.

I am a Modernist born with Post-modern baggage.

The second time the milk, the dog and the relationship between the boys stood out. But more than that: I discovered a whole new way of using language. Scoff - I have done it myself. Don't justify the scoffing with Portrait of an Artist - I did too. But Ulysses...

I am trying to find you an example of the best of his prose, but it can't be extracted without being meaningless or trite. The story may jump in some places and delay in others, but every sentence is inseparable from the next. The sentences are short but tight: a design lecturer once told me that the best design is not the one with the most elements, but the one from which you have removed every element except the ones you need. That's Joyce. If he doesn't need a verb, preposition and so on, he doesn't use it.

So why did I stop re-reading? Joyce's may not be the longest book, but it is a weight even for the reader. By 90 pages I was exhausted. The denseness of the prose is its genius, but also the thing that turns the reader away, clutching the ribbon. Based on my last attempt, I think each chapter needs to be re-read to be understood on even the most superficial level of plot.

Ribbon blown away, like a plaster ripped off.

You have noticed the title again and are wondering whether I am prophesying my own failure. (After all I predicted your scoffing.) You know the saying: Stupidity is failing, and then using the same methods and expecting a different outcome. Or is it futility? Stupidity, futility - they're more closely related than their birth certificates indicate.

Because maybe the more you beat at a brick wall, the bricks begin to crack and crumble. Maybe one brick loosens enough for you to pull out, and your fingers toughen and once you've weakened the base, the rest crumbles too. It may take longer to pull down the Great Wall of China than it took to build. But did the job need to be done any faster? And I'm guessing that when builders had only completed a thousandth of the wall, someone commented about the job's futility.

This analogy, I realise now, describes the writer's efforts more than mine. Many people thought he was a profiteer and others tolerated him. I can compile some nasty reviews based on Portrait myself. But he trusted his instincts and wrote prose that would not change the needle on a balance scale. I suppose it's a bit like knowing there is treasure on the other side of the wall and that there is only one way to get there. Well, there are always more options, but reading Sparknotes defeats the object of the exercise.

Lookee!

This isn't a made-you-look joke (maybe only because I didn't think of it until now). But you may not be as excited as this would-be Epicurean (I think I'm slipping the other way, though, into Stoicism. Or miserism) when I quit stalling and just tell you. A book, two books! Yes, and...? This is a blog about books. Well one's a dictionary-cum-language guide and the other a seminal feminist work. Do you see?!

This silence perturbs me... It is a simple question.

What was that? Your silence is a sign of trust? Nice catch. Because there is nothing strange about me slobbering over these books, as you know. Words are so embedded in the way we interpret the world, as people and societies. And one little book holds all or most or, okay, some of them - did you know the most comprehensive version is 20 volumes long?

And this dictionary contains notes about the usage of the word, and not just an idiom or two listed in italics and the etymology. There are columns and columns making pages and pages of notes. Just on one word at a time. It took one entry before I popped the thing under my left arm:

except, excepting, except for ... except is preferable to  excepting and except for as the preposition meaning 'excluding'. Excepting would be slightly unidiomatic... and except for slightly informal, and both are best avoided.

The entry continues for one more page. Yep, that was it. The moment I fell. (Not into Stoicism. I was in the second-hand bookshop hiding away from... it.) There is more, though, fear you not! Being second-hand, it is old. An old, hardcover Reader's Digest edition, printed in black and white ink. A first edition and the start of a library of such things.

Actually, an addition to a growing library of such things. Being an editor, I am armed with several versions of the same dictionary, as well as style guides,an online subscription to a style manual, spelling guides, punctuation guides, dictionaries per subject and more general books about language. So, I suggest you accept my changes with good grace and back away, barbarians! Wait, no, wrong audience.

The thrum of words caught between a cover, the weight of the book and the smoothness of its cover in my hands... The book hunter's elusive reward. And here it was. Here it is. It has been too long, my friend.

Not one, but two, friends. The other is a ragged-looking paperback. B format, if that means anything to you. It looks like those orange and white Penguin editions from the 80s.White spine. Bolded title. The author's name is roman type.  The cover black as a background to a single image in the foreground. Lines of praise on the back.

The cover image is horrifying, to be honest. I don't do well with... this sort of thing, so I almost put it back. An illustration of a woman's skin hanging from a pole, in the shape of a pair of dungaree-shorts. Even the implication of violence makes me queasy. Which is, I realised, the point. Not convinced, I opened to the contents page. Every chapter has a one-word theme and heading such as these:

LOVE - Egoism

SOUL - The stereotype

BODY - Bones

I will not go into my views on feminism in today's, enlightened society (except to say that all sorts of '-isms' are institutionalised (that's my politician word) and bred into us unwittingly (that's my writer's phrase)) (oh and that there is evidence, let's talk after class). You know, I'm already angry, just writing that. Just angry enough to... do nothing, I guess.

Nothing, except read these books, and think about their arguments, and craft some of my own, and write another book.

Maybe you do think I tricked you. If I were you, I probably would. Because I'd be you and not me, the me who collects dictionaries and looks up to stringent feminists. The you that I'd be would really still be you and you have other obsessions and opinions, dreams and horrors. Unfortunately though, and in defiance of the inflated claims of digital revolutionaries, this is one-sided conversation.

The Reading Challenge and space elevators

Goodreads has set me a challenge. Dully but practically called The Reading Challenge. Can you hear the rising crescendo of music that appears every time 'The' with a capital 'T' is used? Or is that in my mind?

Technically I set myself the challenge, but that was my past self, my January self. Since then I have discarded many skin cells, some brain cells (I hit my head - stabbed it, actually, into the edge of a wooden shelf) and have changed my mind about many things many times. Since that self exists only in memory and in my use of the site over time, Goodreads henceforth takes responsibility for my questionable choices. Precedence!

No, don't read that again! The logic is like rock, but not the kind you mine through. Just accept the conclusion on faith. This is a turning point in our relationship. Pseudo-relationship.

This past self of mine decided that I would read 1 book a week or 52 books this year. (Scoff not, you - think of me next time you pile your plate with more than you can eat!) Then Game of Thrones happened. Somewhere in the middle of that Agaat happened. Note to self: when entering a reading challenge, choose the short books, not tomes of 1 000 pages and more.

According to my rock-like logic, I am in February 2013. Which is great because February is my favourite month. Except that *revelation and more crescendoing* it's June. Not for much longer, but let's not think about that.

Just before I started this post, I discovered you can change the number of books your past self foisted on you. I am not a quitter. Ok, well, I am, but first I like to make the journey painful so that when I quit, my memory of my past self doesn't make me feel so bad. Instead, I shall read like... a voracious reader in the hopes of catching up those four months.

Shush. It's my plate and I can pile it to the moon if I want. No, actually, I can't. Not physically. Not until Google X or LiftPort or someone builds that elevator. The ceiling, then.

And if I don't make it... Will I crawl into a foetus-like ball and rock awkwardly? Will I run down the highway hysterically? Will I do something silly like invest in a crowdfunded space elevator? No. At the very last minute, I shall click on 'Update' and change the number to slightly less than I have read. The definition of cheating is all in how you view the problem.

Starting position: 1Q84

A trilogy? How blasè, we moan, hand to forehead like Scarlet O'Hara. (We're a dramatic bunch, us readers. After all, we choose to experience more lives, more stories. For fun.) These 'trilogies' are false promises: the episodes breed until, five books later, you're waiting for your favourite character to... die from old age. (My favourite died in Book 3. He wasn't old. There are a lot of pages to wade through after heartbreak like that.) Anyway, this trilogy is the Rhett Butler to your Scarlet O'Hara.

You know what book it is - the title is in the title of the post. So I can meander. Haruki Murakami's novels are not easy reads, in any sense. It's like James Joyce: You either think he's a genius or a hack. (Guess which side I am on. In both cases.) And that has a lot to do with the book you start with.

I started with Kafka on the Shore and didn't know what to think until the novel was almost finished. The author tells multiple stories at the same time and, although I enjoyed each story, I couldn't figure out where this was going. Then, like those clowns who twist and knot balloons into shapes (I hate balloons, incidentally), he tied everything up into a neat... poodle.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was not as pleasant. I disliked it for the same reason I liked Kafka. The stories are sequential, not parallel. And like everything Murakami writes, the characters are symbolic. So you're carrying your interpretation through the different stories, and it's supposed to be 'maturing' as the novel develops, but the clues keep mutating. Your poodle is suddenly a sausage dog and then it's not even a dog - it's a giraffe!

Both novels are intentionally cryptic, I think to make you aware of the process of interpreting what you read and to give you the freedom to essentially create your own novel with the author. All very post-modern hurrah. In Kafka, Murakami beckoned me on to a shaded verandah to create our balloon animals. In Wind-up Bird, he herded me into a kids' party and went to run some errands.

With a win-lose ratio of 50:50, you might doubt my objectivity here. Surely I need another round before proclaiming his novels Monarchs of their own Bookshelf? Consider that, after Kafka, I could not read anything for weeks. The first books I read after both of Murakami's novels were Neil Gaiman's. After Murakami's plot contortions, Gaiman's novels seemed staid. I'm sorry! I can hear you O'Hara-ing again! My point is only (settle down, please) that I was almost literally transfixed by each book, regardless of my review of it.

So here we go: 1Q84. Released in three instalments in Japanese only, it was translated and released in English a year or so ago. (The delay between the Japanese and English editions amounts to the same anticipation at the delay between installments. Clever.) Now, I have my eye on a copy and that copy is mine - all 1318 pages, bound in a black cover, with a spine that will crack beneath the weight of the words and their symbolism...

But you don't eat a biscuit at once. No. You twist the pieces until you can get to the centre: creamy, chocolatey, jammy, whatever. You eat the centre first and then the biscuit pieces. That is The Only Way. Cease and desist. Put away that balloon.

So first, I will place the book on a central surface (my kitchen counter). Second, I will manhandle it for a few days: ruffle the pages to feel their weight, open the book up to examine the typeface, examine the cover (front, spine and back), read the introduction, read the blurb and (this is the real test of an editor - I'll save the story for another time) smell the pages. Only then will I begin to read, armed with a bookmark and settled in a warm spot.

Trilogies might be tired, but we still buy the books and read them - Robert Jordan would be a lot quicker to write if he needed the money to pay off a car. Trilogies are epic. Unlike other trilogies, though, Murakami is going to abandon me standing on a stage with a handful of limp balloons and a clown costume. Guaranteed. This isn't The Lord of the Rings.

Byatt's fairy stories

An open-air mall lined with cheap boutiques and stationery shops, and headlined by a supermarket. Next to the greengrocer (trails of trodden lettuce leaves) is a second-hand bookshop. Outside, a tray of 'cheapies' (proclaimed, in yellow) - dog-eared paperbacks, the spines so bent you can't read the titles. Inside, shades of brown that conceal you from the sensual frenzy outside. Dun brown carpet, streaked and scratched wooden bookshelves, lacquered brown counter, yellow pine chairs.

You remember - when you were young and starting out in your career, you were a bit... naive. No, not naive - you just don't know any better (there's a difference). In varsity, where output was graded and critiqued and the marker had a marksheet, every A or B stroked your ego. You deconstructed the state of your industry, on at least three different premises, and you read the thoughts of future peers. Deep down you believe you represent a gestating revolution in the industry and you are eager to learn how to hatch the darn thing.

I can't speak for yours, but in the local media industries, management is often first seduced by and later annoyed by the eagerness of 'newbies' (a grand Thursday night story, told into glasses of wine). See, they think 'eager' means 'exploitable' (and 'expendable') and 'young' means 'cheap'. If you are lucky, management empathises with you but shrug their shoulders because that's just the way it is. If you're unlucky, you get management who have been through the same thing and would like to carve you a matching chip.

Six months in to working with one of the latter, I was off sick with sinusitis. (Note that I do not get sick, that is, without a psychosomatic stimulus. Do not scoff. Whenever and with whatever I am sick, I suffer from some degree of 'sight impairment'. Yip, turns out acute sinusitis can temporarily infect the optic nerves. Partial blindness in one eye.) I was off sick and I was horribly sad. So I wrapped myself up and drove myself (squinting) to the shops to get a movie and a magazine.

Instead, snivelling and with a wad of tissues in hand, I detoured to calm my soul among ceiling-high bookcases, yellowing paper and the promise of treasure. A good rule is to only buy books you have been looking for. Or to buy a bookshop. What would I find? Rushdie? Fowles? Calvino? Mitchell? Or the classics - James? Forster? Woolf? Some poetry?

A black spine, about 15 cm high. The title set horizontally in a thin white font. AS Byatt. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five fairy stories. I pulled it from between its taller companions, forefinger behind the top furl of the cover - it was hardcover, with the dust jacket in perfect condition because it had been neatly covered in thick plastic. I knew then, but I'll tell you more.

The dust jacket is jewel green, with yellow text, the colours outdated now. The inside endpapers are the green of an evergreen shrub. The illustrations are taken from historical collections: a Persian musician, a jewelled peacock and a pious woman. The paper is thick but unvarnished, and textured in the type of grain you can see in brown paper. Each story begins with an historical black-and-white etching.

Mrs Byatt has been one of my favourite authors since I read Possession during my internship. (Damn straight I remember when - the book was thick and heavy, and the writing equally impenetrable.) I feel as though, under her primary author's voice, I can hear another, more tender one, always wondering. How does this work? Why? What happens when I pull this or that? Something sadly empathic under more academic toing and froing. Since then I had collected every secondhand book of hers I have 'unearthed', to build a collection of different editions.

This treasure is by far my favourite. It is my favourite because it represents the ideal of the secondhand hunt. It is my favourite because I was so sad and just holding this book in my hand... I can remember how overwhelmingly reassured I felt. Books like that are the reason I write and the reason I publish. When I think back, I can remember seeing it on the shelf, holding it and buying it, in a room made of blocks of browns. But perhaps that is just my sensory memory gratifying my emotional memory...

I have pulled out the book now and placed it next to me, to the left of my computer. Next to it is my next read: Ragnarok, also by Byatt. I found it by accident the other night, browsing the science-fiction section of the library. The book is thin - less than 200 pages - and a paperback. The yellow spine was pushed back into the shelf, so it was obscured by the tall and thick hardcovers around it. Is this how I am always to discover Byatt's allegories?

What do Russia and dystopia have in common?

When I typed in the heading, the spelling feature in Chrome highlighted 'dystopia' and gave me only one option: 'topiary'. It's a bit of a leap from anti-paradise to a garden feature via Russia, but I'm sure that there's an answer out there. This is not what the first and last have in common, however, so perhaps we can ponder this in another post.

Multiple answers come to mind. The most obvious one is that this is the literature I am most drawn to at the moment. (One might be tempted to diagnose my state of mind here, but you're reading the post of an amateur anarchist, so really what did you expect?)

Ah, The People's Act of Love. Some of you may know how that book both terrifies me and is high on my favourites list. You may also know that the book haunts me in a tangible way, in that I am always aware of its presence, that just looking at it (as I am right now) is enough to plunge me into crisis and hold my head under water, and that I am not the only person to feel this way (click on link, now please).

PS. When trying to find an appropriate link, the first Google option was 'I love catching people in the act'. No words. Just resignation.

No one knows this personal snippet, except that now you do: when I was a child (climbing trees and reading, copiously) I believed I was Russian. Not consciously, of course. I only realised in adolescence that a) I believed this and b) it wasn't true. When I looked in the mirror I saw a snow-pale, black-haired child. (I am pale, but more the tint of hail clouds and my hair is a dull brown; not that I have a self-esteem issue but this is true.) I'm not suggesting anything esoteric here, only that I identified with something I had watched or read about.

So, it seems, anarchy isn't just an intellectual revolt.

It goes without saying that browsing secondhand bookshops is my favourite way to kill time. I confess, even on a Friday night, when my peers are donning heels and matching underwear. In need of indulgence, I was browsing (on a Wednesday not a Friday evening), finding nothing of interest until I browsed the 'Book club reads' on my way out of the shop (no stone left unturned). Four pairs of men (their hands tied behind their backs I see now) set against a background of snow. I knew I would buy it even before I picked it up.

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-56 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. (This does not classify as a book club read, but I'm glad it was in my path, appropriately as I was leaving disappointed.)

There it was, as if it knew I was about to reread The People's Act of Love. That is crazy, yes, and anthropomorphic. But this book is enough to make me wax lyrical for hours, except that my words are usually inarticulate in this instance: "I can't explain it; the book destroyed me. Des-troy-ed." *shaking head* And again, on repeat.

This post is already too long, so I'm going to skip over to dystopia.

The list of great such novels is long, so look out for this post. War is dypstopia. It is pre-apocalypse. The thought of people dying and suffering, for decades after too, and often for no reason... How are we not as horrified by even one such event as we should be about children sleeping on the street? It is beyond my comprehension, as it is that I can sit here typing while people suffer. While children suffer. People, we are living in a dystopia. And there is nothing you or I can do. This is the nature of my nihilism.

Reading dystopian fiction relieves some of this pressure (while reminding me that I am a hypocrite) and often pushes me towards the ideals of socialism. Perhaps I should amend my heading: What do the revolutions and gulags in Russia and dystopia have in common? That answer is obvious. And here my shoulders hunch and I lean over my keyboard, gutted.

Intellectually, I can justify my current literary obsessions. Emotionally, the anger and helplessness at the bigness of life and death and pain (because no happiness or beauty can amortise pain) overwhelms me and this is the only demonstration of my refusal to accept this that I can muster.

My next read is We by Yevgeny Zamayatin, a translation of a Russian dystopian novel that, according to reports, precedes (chronologically and in content) all other such novels. Look out for future posts. I will try to contain my emotional nihilism, although really this is the nature of my blog and I shouldn't be afraid of potentially squeamish readers, because virtual sharing is about the construction of my virtual identity not yours - sorry folks.

"If Kelsey Newman's theory about the end of time is true..." I will have enough time to read every book on my list

Browsing through the local bookshop at lunch, I saw Scarlett Thomas's latest, Our Tragic Universe. When I first read The End of Mr Y, I loved it, although now I think perhaps there is just too much pop-science with very little substance. This amendment to my opinion might have something to do the second novel of hers I read, called Popco. That one just didn't hold together very well - I would like to say that it lacks direction, but it does have a direction, just not a very interesting one.

I'm intrigued by the blurb of Our Tragic Universe, but more specifically by this line: "If Kelsey Newman's theory about the end of time is true, we are all going to live forever." So, more pop-science then. And oh I do love pop-science (no sarcasm intended although it is here somehow). But the first paragraph let me down. It reads like something a talented high school student might write with some coaching, rather than something written by an experienced author. Read it for yourself and see.

To add to this, as much as I love the original cover idea, it seems a little staid - especially since the world and her mother have since used the same idea. They seem to have made some effort to update it through the colours, and it definitely jumped off the shelf at me, but something about it still bores me. Perhaps I will feel differently when I finish reading it?

Robert Bolano's covers

You can't see the spine of 2666 here, but you can't possibly miss the book on a bookshelf. It's the same pink (I know there is a word for this particular shade but I can't think of it right now) as the title. And it is thick (think Joyce's Ulysses). When you open the cover, the eye belongs to a skeletal face that might be screaming or laughing. It's horrific. Which makes it strangely compelling. One review says that the novel contains the entirety of human experience between its pages. Which is even more horrific.