Stand-out books of 2018

Dirt Road - James Kelman,          

This another of those books - told from a single point of view - that requires a change of mindset, of mental pace, to read but it was so very worthwhile for the thought-provoking depths of it. Murdo's struggling to cope with grief and the adolescent bursting for independence, in America rather than Scotland (so all the more dislocating) - plus the insight into experiencing the joys of playing music were impressively told and made for a very satisfying read.

The Lesser Bohemians Eimear McBride

This is more than reading a story. It is the absorption into another's head, another's life and experiences and so intense, and so throat-aching, it could only be absorbed in relatively short doses - I needed to stop for a breather. The writing - "stream of existence rather than consciousness" - is what sets it above and beyond much writing of relationships, and sets a new standard for would-be writers about sex and being with another, about honesty and what happens when one lies.

The Handless Maiden – Vicki Feaver

This contains 'Judith' which blew my breath away and introduced me to the gut-wrenching, mind-blowing use of words, creation of new imagery to be enjoyed and enjoyed again and again in Vicki Feaver's poetry,.

A Natural – Ross Raisin

Amazing for more than holding my interest throughout, despite my considerable scorn for all that is football. This was a weightily emotion-packed novel, full of well-drawn characters. The sense of doom inescapable, my involvement total. And yet so much, so many of the turning points were feather-light.,

Unexploded – Alison MacLeod

Sense of place and time wonderfully evoked. The treatment of aliens and prisoners, the suspicions of Brighton's residents, the inexperienced lack of thought and brutality of those in authority make this a rich experience. The tension, so gradual and so pessimistic, and the collision of several dreadful possibilities perfectly executed. And above all the relationships, the push-pull of marriage, the betrayals small and large, the compromises, painfully true to life. 

The Rules of Backyard Cricket – Jock Serong

The pace of this, the delivery and impact of the telling mimics that of a bowled cricket ball and, to continue the obvious parallel, hits the wicket every time. Or the bat, sweet enough to soar, along with the reader's admiration and heart-broken attention every time. Heartbreaking it is, and you don't need to know anything about cricket to fully appreciate the skill with which this tale is told.

 London Rules/ Smoke and Whispers –  Mick Herron

I really cannot praise London Rules highly enough. Like all of Mick Herron's Slough House series the protagonists are an endless source of entertainment, the pace is lunatic and the observations so incredibly sharp they tingle one's brain.

I came away from Smoke and Mirrors thonking what a clever brain Sarah Tucker has. As does her creator. And what a wonderful, exhilarating book this was.

Cairo -  Chris Womersley

Read on a plane in one single sitting, absorbed and admiring of the way the tale was built to hold so much tension and the insight into the mind and emotions of Tom Button. Manipulation par excellence

Bone Deep – Sandra Ireland

 Very slightly less amazing than 'Beneath the Skin', but nevertheless un-put-downable and read in virtually one sitting. The writing so lucid, the tales told with clarity, the tension slow-paced but no less taut and the brooding sense of place over-arching.

If I Should Die – Matthew Frank

I'm very grateful to the assistant in Glasgow's Argyle Street Waterstones who recommended Matthew Frank to me then gently insisted I begin with this rather than 'Between Crosses', which he had on the shelf. More than lived up to its promise, for characters - physically flawed, war-damaged trainee detective, anti-bullshit female Caribbean DS, plus more - plot, setting and 100% enjoyment. An extremely satisfying read.

Blue Night –  Simone Buchholz

This was superb - a female character with an initially off-putting, chick-lit type name, who was one of the most believable and appealing protagonists I've read in a long time: ballsy but suffers doubts, and has a strong moral streak. But above all it was the quality of the writing - and the translation - which shot it up to a five star rating almost from the first page. Pity it is the tenth in the series but only the first to have been translated into English

49 of the 175 books read this year were five-star, of which 18 were binge re-reads of previously much-enjoyed books - Peter Temple and Andrew Greig to name but two. Six of the above were new discoveries - long may that keep happening!

Where to start?

An Amazon parcel arrived this morning, courtesy of the voucher received for my birthday, just before Christmas.  Three novels – one of which is Emma Darwin’s ‘A Secret Alchemy’ – and the long-awaited (order back in September) ’Crime Writer’s Guide to Police Procedure’.

I received ’The Elements of Eloquence’ and ‘To the Letter’ plus four novels as gifts from my children, who also lent me thirteen novels.  Accidentally, I’ve already picked up five more charity shop bargains.

Plus there’s the three books of poetry which arrived on Christmas Eve.

The two non-fiction books will sit on my reference shelf, but both need to be read first.

And how do I juggle poetry with fast-pace novels?  

Psychic Distance

Probably the best, i.e. most useful/exciting, workshop of the lot at York, for me, was Debi Alper talking about Psychic Distance.

Debi and Emma Darwin spend an entire week on the topic in their six week on-line course 'Self-editing your novel', which runs three or four times a year via the Writer's Workshop, but even the single example she made us attempt was an eye-opener.  And not only for writing, but reading too - I could recognise Psychic  Distance in action in Lesley Glaister's writing, and now know that it is one of the main reasons books totally fail to sparkle.

More information here:
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/psychic-distance-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it.html

More useful, by far, than just listening was being told to do an exercise using Psychic  Distance.  We were given ten minutes in which to describe the reaction of a soldier just returned from war as he meets his father for the first time, handing him a photograph:

Steps.  Five of them.  Will I be able to manage them, with half a leg and the other barely functioning?  I’ll look bloody silly if I fall, land on my arse.  

Though it wouldn't be the first time he’d’ve seen my fucking arse either, from what Ma said.  Then I had all my fucking bits too ... but O Christ ... he doesn’t have a fucking clue who I am.

I grope for the photograph, leaning on the concrete wall, half my mind taken up in the looking at him.

Although I do already use it instinctively, it was hard to do, and the follow-up - the ignorant father's response, even harder:

Another wounded soldier.

You can only do so much, and this one so young, no more than twenty, twenty-two perhaps.  The age that ...

No.  Impossible ... even though his eyes are so like Mary’s.  So very much like hers, blue of cornflower.  Too long since they smiled at me.  I was a bloody, bloody fool ...

What?

What’s this? ... A photograph?... Mary ... oh Mary.

My space, today

Took this at 06.45 this morning, with the intention of posting it on a new group. 

 Not done that yet, but will.   

Tells it like it is - I write and I read - all the books on view are on my to-be-read pile.

Also tells you I don't do tidy.

Losing Faith - and accurately justifying it.

This is one of the eight books I picked up in New York, this from the wonderfully-named 'Mysterious Bookshop'.

A typical example of the title (spine only visible when I selected it) i.e. font plus colour initially attracting my attention, and then the blurb, which began "We are burying her today."

Speed-reading, I omitted the next paragraph and read the first line of the third: "Faith had been dark, disturbing, a Goth" which presumably (because I remember no conscious thought) removed all expectation that it would be at all religious.

Third paragraph of the opening page describes a breakfast which "sizzles and giggles to itself"; egg yolk described as "a malevolent yellow eye watching me from the plate."
And I am hooked.

And continue to be so throughout the book.  My Goodreads review was as follows:  "I did enjoy this. Disconnected. Fractured. Slow to start, hard to see for much of the time where it is heading. Not at all consecutive and the main character un-named and of dubious character, but a thoroughly engaging read. And one I'll read again."

And two novels more by Daniel Blythe are on their way from Amazon (despite the fact that I subsequently discovered he also writes Dr. Who books!!!)
He also kindly sent me the image for the cover since it does not appear on Goodreads

TW3 (remember that?)

TW3 - Friday night, allowed to stay up late despite not entirely understanding the satire of Willie Rushton, not sure whether or not David Frost was a pain and loving the husky break in Millicent Martin's voice, but knowing that this was something new and shocking.

But I'm more referring to the past week - a scratchy week of grey cold, lots of reading (a Good Thing mostly) and bloody editing.  Sometimes editing feels good, improvements flow and you know things can only get better, but last week that 'are you sure you're not overwriting, losing the freshness?' question kept asking itself.   Over both novels, which are at the same stage, despite having been begun six months or so apart.

The reading has been mixed:  three fast-paced, violent, noir, damaged hero crime novels (Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, Ray Banks), all superbly written but a factor in my mild dissatisfaction with what I've written (and no I do not want to emulate but in admiring one can't help but measure).  Frances Fyfield, more thriller than crime but much more 'English', and Tessa Hadley were equally enjoyable. 
[N.B. do click on the top five book covers in  montage in the right hand column for more information]

But yesterday I joined a group called WriteWords which promises much, provided I make the effort to participate.
This week's Prediction prompts are eldritch, manse and aristocracy, with the addition of syzgy if I fancy it.   Not sure how Tao and Carrion Jack, or John Pettinger and Raptor are going to manage those (The story so far can be read on Pages, above.)

Is it just excellent observation?

I'm currently reading Anne Enright's 'The forgotten waltz'.

There is a chapter when she describes lying in bed, hearing her man get up to pee.
We've all been there, done that, heard the stop start, and the sigh, heard the cord of the light switch bounce on the mirror, the slap of the feet on the floor.
Is that why it, her writing, has such power - because we recognise and share, glad to have our inner selves confirmed as being normal?

At that light switch level I could do this too - but am in a way reluctant - scared, maybe, of boring my imagined reader with mundane (but she is not mundane!)   

She describes love and death, sex and arguments, much of which I also recognise, but I am far less confident that I could write it, fearing that in doing so, in describing something which I am having, from the paucity of my experience, to make up, to pad out with my imagination, I am getting it horribly wrong.

Top ten books of 2012

Never until this year have I kept track of what I'm reading - thank Goodreads for that - and I'm not a Top Ten sort of person - but yesterday my younger son sent me his Top Ten and it was easy enough to select, from the 127 read so far, the twenty I'd awarded five stars.   Duplicates of all but one author were eliminated, as were books read for the second time (Angla Carter's 'Love', Iain Banks 'Espedair Street', Ian Rankin).
All were memorable except for Sarah Moss's 'Waking' which, from my review, I was impressed with at the time but cannot now recall -   obviously I need to re-read that one.
What is left is in no particular order, but is surprising insofar as there are not that many crime fiction there - most of them fell into the four star category, which totalled forty-seven.

Denise Mina                Garnethill

Louise Welsh              The Bullet Trick

Angela Carter              Heroes and villains

Jose Carlos Somoza    The Art of murder

Michael Robotham      Shatter

Sarah Hall                   How to paint a dead man

Cormac McCarthy      No country for old men

Stuart MacBride         Birthdays for the dead

Cormac McCarthy      Blood Meridian

Douglas Coupland      Eleanor Rigby

Ian Rankin                  The St. Leonard’s years

 Emma Donoghue       The room

Louise Welsh              Tamburlaine must die

Angela Carter              Love

Ian Ayris                     Abide with me

Iain Banks                   Espedair Street

Louise Welsh              The Cutting room

Susie Nott=Bower      The Making of her

Sarah Hall                   Haweswater

            Sarah Moss                 Night Waking

Goodreads

Always a bit slow to pick up on technology, I finally found how to put my Goodreads list on my blog, selecting (after a couple of false starts) the option of posting the twenty-seven or so most recently-read books.

Still mostly crime novels, and generally a preponderance of Scottish  crime, which I began reading over a year ago in preparation for 'Not wanted on voyage', my NaNoWriMo2011 novel.   I'd not had anything against crime novels, but felt that there was plenty more other stuff I'd choose to read first.   Now, I own at least a bookcase full and have my daughter, youngest son and friends to thank for the loan of many more.

Obviously the original idea was to learn about crime writing.   Invariably I got hooked on the story and forgot to be watching how it was done.   Eventually I learnt to re-read those that I thought might usefully point me in the right direction, and at the same time I realised that I preferred those books which became a series, in which there was the development of a small cast of central characters.
Some, such as Stuart McBride - an early loan - I found too far from my natural style, but I am now wanting to re-read, others I found too awful for words and they were very quickly sent to charity shops, many were so good that I almost gave up there and then, and latterly, as can be seen, I have concentrated on those I was due to see at the Orcrime festival.

I've now got back into the habit of using the library too since, much as I prefer to own books, there is a space constraint:  already this year I have read ninety plus books ...

When 'Not wanted on voyage' is fnally done I shall return to the follow up, working title 'Susannah Elphinstone' (and ~40K words so far), but that's intended to be more of a thriller ...

What is an editor for?

By which I mean what are their core responsibilities?

I ask because I assumed that ensuring correct use of English (inconsistencies of spelling and matching tenses for example) was a given.

And although I would hesitate to claim that they ‘ought’ to impose a minimum level of ‘good’ writing – for example, by suggesting that sentences flow smoothly or that switching to third from first person and back again in a single paragraph was eradicated – I can see that some might be reluctant to impose (put the work in??)

For a novel I would hope that a nod towards veracity was deemed essential, along with an ironing out of any jerky illogicalities which confound the plot, even if only to uphold their own status in supporting the premise that writer is one worth promoting.

So when I read a book by a writer who highly praises her editor and has seven published books (and a contract for more) and I find it barely readable because of what I deem is its poor writing, is that because I’m picky, or that the editor has failed to do her job?

And further undermining my certainty are the tributes from two non-red top newspapers, and the fact that a friend and librarian said that the writer ‘wasn’t bad’, that she had two of her and had looked to buy a third - even given that reading is subjective, surely there’s a bottom line beyond which one would suppose any competent editor would not sink?

aros 14 - to Shrewsbury

Packing for four days away:
one spare pair of knickers
choice of two novels to read
three notebooks, three pencils
in three different places.
Just in case.