21/03/14: Literary lately #1

I have been through a lot of change of late &, against my pessimistic inclination, I have been trying to view it as positive & exciting rather than scary & worrisome. I know that I am sentimental by nature but the changing of the seasons (albeit a gradual one, girls in bare legs pace yourselves, I'm not out of my thermals yet!) & my imminent birthday (the big two two on Tuesday) have made me more reflective than usual lately. Oh & my little almost eleven year old sister has her first school disco this week but I'm trying to forget about that, gulp. While some changes have been big (graduating from my undergrad, starting a new job), it's the smaller, more personal changes that are more revealing of the ever-shifting definition of who we are: the lengthening of my hair & my hemlines, acquiring a taste for tea & for mushrooms, for red wine & for rye bread, discovering interests in crochet & in learning German again. An integral part of this list, despite perhaps not having changed as much as my tastebuds, are my reading habits. 

When starting work in a bookshop, I always worried that I would bow to the pressure of being expected to have read the latest Kate Atkinson or the Costa Prize winner (that's, err, no & no) but I'm glad to say that I have been able to avoid such a fate. I still read mostly dead authors from my university syllabus, more literary biography than I've realistically any use for & poetry that no one else buys or reads. I did, however, confirm my expectations of rapidly acquiring lots more books for my already groaning bedroom (inhabited by not one but two English students & bookworms, I should also add) - not only from my one, monthly choice from the bookshop (rationed out of strict necessity) but also from the stacks of woefully abandoned, damaged books & the excellent Oxfam I often sneak a peek into on most lunch breaks. I do, however, try to remain faithful to the order in which I buy & read my books & have been making my way through a stack of older books lately including a selection of my beloved Virginia Woolf's shorter fiction, 'The Haunted House', that my boyfriend kindly gifted me last birthday.

Although rightfully most well-known for her pioneeringly Modern & haunting captivating novels, Woolf's short stories are interesting in their exploration of the craft & method of the writer, shorter pieces fulfilling the purpose of experimenting with different styles, gaining a grasp on character & expression, & providing opportunities for invigoration for the author when building up to a novel & respite having concluded one. For all of their practicality, I found many of the stories nonetheless beautiful in their minute capturing of character such as the domestic oddities of 'Lappin & Lappinova', the hopeless ignorance of the gossiping ladies in 'The Society' & the unscrupulous selflessness of 'Miss Pryme'. I also found them to be enlightening to read within the context of Woolf's more established fictions, finding many recurrent images from the endless breaking of waves to the significance of reflections, be they in pools ('The Fascination of the Pool') or mirrors ('The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection) It seems amazing that such a rich tapestry of a novel as 'Mrs. Dalloway' could have begun as 'Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Street' in which Clarissa asserts that 'she would buy the gloves herself.' I wish that I had read them sooner although they will doubtless deepen my experience of the last four of her novels that I am yet to read, namely 'The Voyage Out', 'Night & Day', 'Jacob's Room' & 'Between The Acts'.

One change for which I am grateful is the bookshop's widening my interest in books & writers outside of the firmly Anglo-Saxon context in which education has placed me & I am reading more & more in translation nowadays, most recently chancing upon a £2.50 copy of Hungarian writer Antal Szerb's 'Journey By Moonlight' (glowingly reviewed by Nicholas Lezard here) & currently very much enjoying an edition of extracts from the work of Austrian Stefan Zweig, selected by indie cinema darling & undeniable genius, Wes Anderson who took Zweig's writings as inspiration for his latest film 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'. Having spent a date night at Hackney Picturehouse seeing this wonderfully silly, aesthetically sumptuous, hilariously funny & charmingly quaint film, I was further intrigued to discover Zweig for myself - a very evocative writer chronicling a city, fin de siecle Vienna for the most part, at a time of great artistic prominence which was soon to confront the brutal reality of war & see the struggle between old & new worlds, the clash of tradition with innovation. This article in 'The New Yorker' is particularly good at articulating the way in which 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' depicts a rapidly disappearing world of manners. I am already looking forward to reading Zweig's autobiography, 'The World of Yesterday', in full.

I am, however, undecided on what it to come next, be it 'Hemingway & Fitzgerald', a biography of the friendship between  the two looming literary figures of the so-called Jazz Age, 'American Smoke', Ian Sinclair's curious new book which involves a journey across the US to include the Beats & Black Mountain poets, a book of Katherine Mansfield's short stories that would flow from my reading of Woolf, or a new biography of Moomins creator Tove Jansson whose life was remarkable & whose adult fiction I've read pieces of & loved. Decisions, decisions, I'll let you know what I choose.

What do you think? & what've you got your nose in at the moment?

Speak soon - O.

20/03/14

I read a quote on Pinterest recently (not a habit of mine as I largely loathe the lot of them), although doubtless a little more nuanced than this, read something along the lines of the enduring possibility of being able to make time for anything. I'm sorry & perhaps in brighter moods than this, I may well agree but lately it has seemed to me to be unrealistic & also pretty patronising. I write this from a bench on a platform awaiting a delayed train with a headache & a blocked nose following a terrible evening spent within the stormclouds of my own bad mood, despairing that the new curry recipe (a delicious looking dhal of cauliflower & apricots, no less) I had attempted had gone very wrong & that my evening's achievements had amounted to a load of laundry & not much else. I've likely allowed fraught feelings from being understaffed & working late overflow into the intended respite of my evenings back at home, spent hurriedly catching up on dishes or sulking at my poor, undeserving boyfriend (sorry, Andrew) I have also felt creatively stunted, struggling to string a few words together to contribute to my notebook, sat on my lap, full of crumbs, most lunchtimes, which, in itself, ordinarily provides a way in which to escape the confines of my own head. I figured that I would scrible a little about a recent weekend back at home in Bedfordshire in an attempt to shake these feelings of ineptitude so here goes.

I am often struck by homesickness &, as I have mentioned in a previous, long ago blog post, family is becoming more precious to me as I grow up (/older) & I like to make the journey home when I'm lucky enough to have to consecutive days off of a week .A couple of weeks ago was one such occasion &, having bundled far too many clothes, books & a couple of bunches of daffodils into a tote bag, I headed to the train station straight from work, propping myself up amongst suited commuters, hurtling through the bright lights, fading into those of passing stations, constellations in the otherwise darkness of surrounding fields, towards the familiar creaking of our opening front door & the smell of my mother's chilli con carne for dinner (one of the few exceptions to my otherwise vegetarian diet although my veggie equivalent isn't half bad either!) 

With mother & sister at work & school on the Friday, I enjoyed the empty house filled only with the sound of the kettle boiling, the birds outside & the hum of the radio accompanying the deep, hot bubble bath running, one of the many that I include in my days at home. My grandmother & I had a lunch date for which I pulled on a long, button-up skirt & turtleneck & we sat & ate jacket potatoes & read our books (mine, Virginia Woolf's shorter fiction - a review of sorts imminent - hers, the latest Tami Hoag - not everything is hereditary, it would seem!) in one of the handful of characteristic country pubs dotted around the area. 

I had resolved to try another new recipe while home & with my mother's beloved Aga for my use & with a couple of hours to spare before collecting my sister from the bus stop, I began creaming butter & sugar together for the lemon drizzle cake from 'The Kinfolk Table'(you may well remember my mentioning its loveliness before) Unfortunately, three hours later & faced with a monstrous creation, burnt on top & under-baked in the middle (I dread to think what Mrs. Berry would think), I had to admit failure, or at least that I am very much a cook rather than a baker! Still, anything with almost 600g of sugar in it is inevitably scrummy & Sofia & I quite happily had a syrupy hunk each with a mug of tea, knee to knee in the last of the sun on the back step.

Saturday was more of the same quiet niceties - bathing late, ambling up the hill into the town to mosey around the charity shops (no joy this time) & buy fresh bread for lunch, ordering takeaway curry for a treat for dinner, cross-legged with cartons on the carpet of the sitting room watching whatever was on television but mostly just enjoying each other's company without needing to say so.

Sometimes in the midst of worry or stress these moments can seem impossible, like the sickly heat of summer during the bitterest of winters, like being able to breathe through your nose again when your head feels stuffed full of cotton wool, but it's good to be able to remind yourself that that just isn't so.

Speak soon - O.