Well I’ve got two books from the North today (one further North than the other), both with trademark deadpan humour and surreal juxtapositions, but one eminently readable and the other Very Confusing. And then, to bookend October, which started of course with my mega-book-buying in Cornwall, we have a little pile of lovelies picked up in Buxton last weekend.
Simon Armitage – “Walking Home”
(25 December 2015, from Sian)
I absolutely loved this account of his walk down the Pennine Way (the ‘wrong way’) from Scotland to his home village. I went to a reading by Armitage centred on this book years ago at the Birmingham Book Festival with Sian, and, helped by persuading Matthew to have a dip into the audiobook, I heard the whole book in his distinctive voice.
It’s funny and wry and self-deprecating, of course. It looks upon the surreal and provides a photograph, more often than not. It’s lovely on birds, which was a super surprise and a really great punctuation throughout the book. It lets you into secrets about the Pennine Way, like the attitudes of the people whose land it crosses and the efforts of its instigators to help walkers navigate the odd motorway.
The book is full of lovely little details, like, the waitress who “‘ducks’ beneath the poem as she passes in front of me with a Cumberland sausage,” because of course Armitage is also performing for money given into a sock at a variety of venues down the spine of his journey, recording the money and stray objects he receives and relying on the kindness of strangers to transport his suitcase.
It’s a walk through memories as well, of his family in particular, and those parts are very affecting, as he muses on being someone who’s never moved more than a few miles from where he was born (is this a common thing nowadays, I wonder?). He makes new friends and meets up with old ones, filling in descriptions with a wonderful poet’s shorthand. Excellent book.
Halldor Laxness – “Under the Glacier”
(25 December 2015, from Jane in the US for my Librarything Virago Group Not So Secret Santa)
I want to say first that I loved the other Laxness I’ve read so far, Independent People, and this was on my wishlist.
I was just lost. I did not understand this book at all. Fleeting scenes of a young man investigating a priest gone a bit wrong, random cakes, a mysterious package on a glacier, a disappearing wife … it was just like I was actually reading it in my poor Icelandic (although I’m sure the translation was good). Susan Sontag either understood it enough to write an introduction I couldn’t work out or was pretending. Lost, I was: lost. And I’m sure it was entirely my fault.
I’m wondering what Sian or Karen, both keener than me on weird European fiction, would make of it.
This was written in 1968 and so I’m adding it to the Century of Books, but will swap it out if I read another from that year!
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OK, rather hastily onto those book purchases now … I picked all of these up in the Brierlow Bar Bookshop just outside Buxton, having gone up there to meet my friend Laura (we cover each other’s editing work but luckily no one needed one of us!). It’s a great remainder book shop with a good stock that apparently changes regularly. We then went round all the charity shops, which had lots of good books that I already had and compelled Laura to buy!
Jenny Colgan – “Class” – bought purely and simply because it’s set in a girls’ school in Cornwall – I couldn’t even work out which bit of Cornwall on a quick flick. I was glad I got this as looking at the TBR shelf, it’s rather low on fiction (11 to 25 non-fic now on the main shelf).
Muhammad Yunus – “Banker to the Poor” – he’s the chap who invented microfinance on a big scale – the precursor to all the Kivas and similar, and won a Nobel Prize for it. Hopefully some good and uplifting reading to cheer and provide solace in these dark days of seeming selfishness and entitlement.
Carol Watts – “Writers and their Work: Dorothy Richardson” – a real find, it discusses “Pilgrimage” in some detail, yet is small enough to post around all the “Pilgrimage” readers who would like to read it next year and find out what the series was all about. What a random and excellent find!
Ronald Rice – “My Bookstore” – an America book with delicious untrimmed edges which interviews lots of American writers (Jill McCorkle!) about their favourite places to read and buy books. Looks altogether delightful.
Russell Taylor – “The Looniness of the Long-Distance Runner” – I’m a sucker for running books and this is about a man who signed up for the New York City Marathon then had a year to get fit. It looks funny but is hopefully not TOO silly, and a good inspiration I’m sure.
That’s not many really, is it, and you’ll see tomorrow that the TBR really isn’t that bad still. Hooray!
I’ve also finished Anne Tyler’s “A Spool of Blue Thread”, read on the train journeys to and from Buxton (when I wasn’t reminiscing about Birmingham nightclubs of the 1990s with a bloke I ran for the Stockport-Buxton train with). A bittersweet read in itself, made more bittersweet by it being her LAST book (and I’ve read every one of the others), and will be reviewed in the wrong month as there’s no room for it in October.
Have you read any of these? Have you read a book you couldn’t understand recently??
Oct 31, 2016 @ 20:05:39
I loved the Armitage too – isn’t he so readable? I would *love* to hear him reading the book too – he has such a distinctive voice! As for Laxness – I’ve never read him but this does sound – odd!
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Nov 01, 2016 @ 06:51:11
I might press the Laxness upon you just to see, as you tend to read odder books than me (and have a higher tolerance for them) – it’s only a slim volume. The Armitage was great and I need his Cornwall one now.
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Nov 01, 2016 @ 11:36:08
I’m willing to give it a try…!
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Nov 01, 2016 @ 11:36:28
Oh, and I didn’t know there was an Armitage Cornwall one……….
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Nov 01, 2016 @ 12:19:48
I’ll put the book on the pile and yes, Walking Away.
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Oct 31, 2016 @ 20:25:29
Only 11 fiction? That sounds like you need to go on a major shopping spree…
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Nov 01, 2016 @ 06:50:17
Well, I have the rest of my Reykjavik murder mysteries in the Pile, and not all the non-fic is HARD BOOKS, so I should be OK for the time being …
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Oct 31, 2016 @ 21:01:47
Walking Home sounds like my kind of book. I love books where people walk, run, motorbike, bicycle their way across any expanse of country. I don’t know why I don’t read more of them. This sounds good. I think I will pass on the “Glacier” book. If you don’t get it why do I think I might. Book sales are so fun and I loved seeing what you picked up. I love shopping vicariously with others even if you get to take them home and I just watch. haha Happy Reading
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Oct 31, 2016 @ 21:38:21
Yes, I like a road trip and highly recommend this one.
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Oct 31, 2016 @ 21:30:00
I loved Walking Home, but Walking Away (about doing part of the southwest coast path) is even better. I have heard such high praise for Independent People (on Jane Smiley’s top 10 books of all time, for instance), so must try it sometime. I will steer clear of this other Laxness, though. “My Bookstore” looks very appealing (and I adore deckle edge books). As for Anne Tyler, it wasn’t her last book if you count Vinegar Girl, her Hogarth Shakespeare take on The Taming of the Shrew — it was most enjoyable.
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Oct 31, 2016 @ 21:37:28
Ah yes, I looked at Walking Away in a bookshop in Penzance last year but it was about the other bit of Cornwall (the north coast)! I will get it. Independent People is wonderful.
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Nov 01, 2016 @ 09:48:50
I love Simon Armitage and bought ‘Walking Home’ for my husband. As he hasn’t read it yet, I feel reluctant to jump in before him in case he suspects that I have my eye on all the books I ever buy him (he’d probably be right! 😉 ). I’m insanely jealous of your lucky finds – especially the Watts and the Taylor. I might have to get myself a post-pilgrimage Dorothy Richardson book, to marry her life and memoir, and discover all the bits that went straight over my head!
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Nov 01, 2016 @ 09:51:49
Ooh, that’s a tricky one, isn’t it. You should have read it Very Carefully before you gave it to him! I am going to offer the book on Richardson to everyone who’s been reading her – it’s a very thin book so will be cheap to post. I’ll collect email addresses or something so we can pass it from person to person. There is also a novel about her I’m planning to read once I’m done.
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