Show Me The Treasure

Vertical bookshelf or current must-reads?  Here is a teetering mix of things finished and unfiled in proper shelfs, books in progress, books that are not quite being read and not ready to be abandoned, things to read or re-read, a box with a few bits and pieces, including a watch and a boxed set of Vietnamese porcelain dolls. And yes, that phone ready to dial for library help.

Vertical bookshelf or current must-reads?  Here is a teetering mix of things finished and unfiled in proper shelfs, books in progress, bo...

Yesterday, strolling to the beach, all at once I came upon a box of golden paperbacks, with a help yourself note.Not one to look a gift horse in the eyes, I pocketed an an old Penguin. on which I will report anon, and for more immediate fun the 1938 school classic, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and duly progressed through them at the beach. Maths being a story told only by number and operation,  the less obvious ones give, albeit brief, moments of mental traction, the pleasure of filling in the story.   This maybe a case of raising Ravens.

Yesterday, strolling to the beach, all at once I came upon a box of golden paperbacks, with a help yourself note.Not one to look a gift...

  Three days after I had been lucky enough to score a copy of Mark Flynn’s   new collection of short stories White Light,   my son, ...

Another sketch in the famous author series, taken from a photograph in the Little Black  Book of Books.. Camus is perhaps someone to read in one's twenties, as I did, diligently consuming The Plague and A Happy Death, thinking of him as an ancient. Now I see he died at 46.  Not, ahem, that old at all. The heavy overcoat, worn in this photo, hints at Eastern Bloc winters and perhaps, the TB which hounded, one might say plagued him.
The distortion in these redos gives one a false sense of ownership. Obviously, rereading is needed. 

Another sketch in the famous author series, taken from a photograph in the Little Black  Book of Books.. Camus is perhaps someone to read ...

There was something about the way this young woman's hair framed her face, that reminded me of a a character in an Ishiguro novel, a kind of demure resoluteness. But perhaps this a bit of wistful retro-fitting, a kind of post-hoc intertextuality bought on by finishing Ishiguro's short story collection 'Nocturnes'. After being so smitten with 'Never Let Me Go' this felt like Ishiguro going through the motions, stuck in a room of people he had no sympathy for, like cooking with slightly rotten vegetables, no good can come of it.

There was something about the way this young woman's hair framed her face, that reminded me of a a character in an Ishiguro novel, a ...

Continuing in my pursuit of rendering my favourite authors, or photographs, or both together, in broad strokes of Prussian Blue this redo is based on a wonderful photo of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Marquez makes a little hat, a kind of half-way house, out of One Hundred Years of Solitude, at once alluding in its proximity to the source of the 'Cien Anos' genesis, and perhaps suggesting that, best seller that it is, it goes quite some way in providing a roof over Marquez's head.

Continuing in my pursuit of rendering my favourite authors, or photographs, or both together, in broad strokes of Prussian Blue this redo ...

Last week I finished Andrea Levy's Small Island, a compulsive read, sometimes bleak, more often funny, it illuminates, mostly in a kind watery grey light, a pivot point when the British Empire comes 'home' to roost. The central characters Hortense, Gilbert, Queenie, and a mostly off-stage Bernard have a nearly Shakespearean feel to them, their own soliloquies, their inner chatter areall  great revealers of  plot and character. Gilbert at times might be the grave digger in Hamlet, an irascible and noble clown, Hortense a kind of unrelenting Jamaican version of Elizabeth Bennett, not in her circumstance but in her high handedness, while Queenie is an enigma, an English rose who becomes too literally a metaphor for the Mother Land. Levy's ear for the vernacular is wonderful, the sense of place vividly cinematic.
The Prussian blue redo of a photo of Andrea Levy doesn't do her justice, which is a pity, as the perversity of what goes by as 'justice''  is a central themes in Small Island.
Coda: I stayed up far too late and watched the BBC version on DVD, really well done, but read the book first!

Last week I finished Andrea Levy's Small Island, a compulsive read, sometimes bleak, more often funny, it illuminates, mostly in a kin...

Last week I read 'The Housekeeper + The Professor' by Yoko Ogawa. If you look closely at the image of the cover I've scanned in - and it is only in writing this that I paid attention to this detail myself - you can see that it was bought at LifeLine . Should I note the coincidence, that the characters in the story each are a lifeline to each other, though, naturally this should be the case in any good novel. The plus sign, instead of the more usual word 'and' or the ampersand '&' on the title page is also telling, Much of the connectivity in Ogawa's novel turns on the surprisingly properties of numbers, how they contain and reflect on each other. The number property that is the central metaphor in the first chapter is so wonderful, that, and perhaps I am a little susceptible to the eloquence of numbers, it bought tears to my eyes.  In case you haven't read it I will not spoil it for you by explaining here.  This is a just about perfect novel for me, understated, rich in mathematical metaphors, with a sense of realisation without any of the obvious tying up of ends that lesser writers resort to end a book. 

My only quibble is I feel slightly guilty that in buying it second hand I have deprived Yoko Ogawa of royalties. Perhaps CAL should consider this problem and create an option to donate royalties for writers?

Last week I read 'The Housekeeper + The Professor' by Yoko Ogawa. If you look closely at the image of the cover I've scanned i...