Reading block

So, I have only read one and two halves books so far this year. I have a weekend away this coming weekend, which involves ten hours on trains in total, so I may get some decent reading done then... although I also have a cardigan sleeve and a half to finish knitting, so, hmm.

I find reading blocks very difficult to deal with. I have successfully managed half of Barbara Trapido's Brother of the more famous Jack since yesterday, so I may be emerging from this one, but I have spent most of January feeling antsy and not-right. Partly this has been because I have been in an essay swamp (this evening I hand in To what extent did the fascination with the ‘new woman’ reflect social realities in Weimar Germany? Woo!) and haven't been able to settle to anything without guiltily worrying that I should be reading essay stuff. Then the chicklit novel I started to celebrate my emergence from the essay swamp turned out to be terrible, overly arch and full of anachronisms, so I've laid it aside. (I'm working on my new 'Life's too short to read crap' rule. It is too short. I don't need to finish a book before I judge it unworthy of me.)

Also, due to the aforementioned essay swamp, I haven't had time to tidy or clean the house, or to do any of my other projects (knitting, sewing, cleaning out my wardrobe) so I haven't got to the point where after a busy day I reward myself by sitting down with a book. And bus journeys have been spent staring into space and making mental lists of all the things I need to do rather than reading. Do any of my readers ever get reading blocks, and how do you get out of them?

More Christmas books

Bought with my book token for Skoob, a lovely present from J and E. Thank you!

Resolutions for 2008

- read 100 books
- read more in French
- update this blog more regularly, and try to write a bit more about the books I read
- keep my new blog going
- read more poetry
- read some Proust

On with the new year

So the new year starts well: I received a twenty pound book token for Skoob books as a Christmas present. Not sure yet what I'll spend it on.

I need to update this blog more regularly, although as I'm planning on starting another blog about clothes, this may require some dedication. Giving up the threads (again) should help with this aim.

I'll try and carry on reading more French and German stuff until June, when I'll graduate, at which point I want to rediscover all the science I've forgotten, and read lots of Russian stuff. Read more poetry, and maybe have a go at Proust, I think.

Happy New Year to all my readers.

European poetry - and the last books of the year

Some of the first poetry I read as an adult was from the handful of Penguin Modern European Poets that my dad had - I remember Yehuda Amichai, Miroslav Holub, Alexandr Blok, Zbigniew Herbert, Paul Celan. They had wonderful sixties covers and were just the right size to carry around. I've just finished very slowly reading two fantastic anthologies which cover a lot of the same writers: The poetry of survival: post-war poets of Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Daniel Weissbort, and Against forgetting: twentieth century poetry of witness, edited by Carolyn Forché. Both borrowed from the wonderful Poetry Library at the Royal Festival Hall. [85] [86]

Other Christmas reading included my wonderful Christmas present of Nigel Slater's Kitchen diaries (a really beautiful book as well as a great read), and the Tales of Hoffmann, which entirely by accident turned out to be the most fantastic Christmas reading: spooky and gripping. I also finished a history book about twentieth century Germany - my German courses this year are on the Weimar republic, and Germany 1945-reunification; a children's book about 1940s Vienna and Nazi persecution called Emil and Karl; and Stefan Zweig's Confusion, a brilliant, sad short novel about closet homosexuality. [87] [88] [89] [90] [91]

So, 91 books this year, which is better than last year, and my best ever, I think. The discipline of trying to read a certain number of books is good for me, discouraging me from re-reading things I have read a million times before, and making me think about what I really want to read rather than just picking things up from the library at random. I haven't really been successful at most of my 2007 resolutions, although I've read more in French, and more modern German stuff.

Ten best books of the year, in no particular order:

Life and fate, Vladimir Grossman
Germinal and Nana, Émile Zola (really two books)
Civilisation and its discontents, Sigmund Freud
How I live now, Meg Rosoff
Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann
Death in Rome, Wolfgang Koeppen
The bloody chamber, Angela Carter
A literature of their own, Elaine Showalter
Flight without end, Joseph Roth
Le chat du rabbin, Joann Sfar

There ought to be some poetry in there, as I've read a fair bit of poetry this year, but it always seems to be individual poems I really love, rather than collections or anthologies. Honourable mentions to John Cornwell, Billy Collins, Paul Celan and Keith Douglas.

Christmas books

Hope all my readers had a good Christmas - and got the books they wanted...

More French stuff

Finally, two books for my course: Madame Bovary and Germinal. Both brilliant, and both re-reads, although I liked Madame Bovary far more now than I did when I was seventeen. (At the time I was rather earnestly political and thought Emma should pull herself together, stop moping about reading novels, and count her blessings, rather like the curé in the novel.) [83]

Germinal is also fantastic, although I still appreciate it mainly for the same reasons I did when I was seventeen: it's so brutal and angry, and Étienne is such a fantastic, human hero. [84]

And the rest

Quick catch-up of other books, as I probably won't get round to a longer post for them: The Tudors, by Christopher Morris (not that one), a short books about the Tudor Kings and Queens, the lastest Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovish, which was good fun but much like all the other Stephanie Plum books, and Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, which didn't really work. [79] [80] [81]

However, on various people's recommendations,I read and loved Meg Rosoff's How I live now, which was a lovely, sad novel about a teenage girl who moves from New York to Britain and gets caught up in a war. I thought this was wonderful and really want to read her other book now. [82]

Modern german novels

I haven't been updating this as much as I should, but other stuff has been keeping me busy. Anyway, I've been reading German stuff and really enjoying it, especially as it's all been very short. I love short novels and novellas.

Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome, which was short and chilling and bitterly angry, an examination of Germany after the war. Four men reunite in Rome: a former Nazi mayor, now democratically elected Bürgermeister and his brother, a former SS-man now wanted for war crimes, and their respective sons, a conductor and a priest. As a discussion of what Germany and the Germans are, it's pretty brutal, but the structure and balance of the book is wonderful: a review I saw described it as 'choreographed like a ballet'. I want to read his other books about post-war Germany, Pigeons on the grass and The hothouse, but only found A sad affair in the library, his novel about a true life obsession with a cabaret singer. Not such an interesting theme or gripping book, but a fab Weimar-decadence atmosphere: even ze orchestra are beautiful. Thanks to N for the initial recommendation of Death in Rome. [74] [75]

Two more books of Joseph Roth's (I seem to be reading my way through his complete works, but he's so brilliant, it's great). Left and right, a novel about two brothers during the rise of the Nazis, and some of Roth's journalism from 1920s Berlin, collected as What I saw. The journalism is great and really captures the uneasiness of the time, as well as being funny. [76] [77]

And another German writer, another short book, and another recommendation from a friend, Stefan Zweig's Twilight, which was charming and sad. [78]

Politics and music

A little book, more like a pamphlet, called When ol' blue eyes was a red, which was a valiant attempt to save Sinatra from his older, Reagan embracing, 'That's Dr Sinatra, you little bimbo' right-wing image, and make a case for him being a subversive leftie in his youth. It's not a very good case. He was a pretty good guy in his youth; he made several prominent stands against racism long before the civil rights movement was really big, and it's well documented that he was a generous, liberal guy who gave generously to some left causes. Betsy Blair, Gene Kelly's first wife, who was very left wing, enough that she was blacklisted, described him as a 'good democrat', and that's alway been my impression of him too. This book tries to stretch it out into something more and doesn't really succeed. [72]

Rednecks and bluenecks, a book about the politics of country music, was very interesting: it starts with the reception that the Dixie Chicks got in the US when they made a joke about George Bush, and then interviews a whole lot of country musicians about their politics. It paints a very interesting picture of American society and what seem like great fractures based on moral and political beliefs, and made me want to track down quite a lot of coutry music (i only really know the older, schmaltzy stuff). [73]