“The Bell” round-up and “A Severed Head” preview #IMReadalong @IrisMurdoch

Welcome to this month’s #IMReadalong update, where I’m going to start collecting people’s views on “The Bell” (time has told that a good few reviews come in after the end of the month, for reading or reviewing scheduling reasons, and that’s of course FINE) and then share images of my four copies of “A Severed Head” and their blurbs.

“The Bell”

Various people got to discussing “The Bell” as early as my introductory post last month, especially because I was a bit late with my review (I’m starting “A Severed Head” tomorrow to avoid having this issue again). Do have a look at the comments, especially Maria Peacock’s long note.

I had some lovely cover images from Peter Rivenberg which I shared on my review post, and there has been a bit of discussion there. Jo has put up another excellent review on Goodreads and I particularly liked her contrast of Dora and Toby.  Liz also reviewed it on Goodreads and wasn’t so keen – which is fine, of course, and I’m sharing here to reassure anyone else who had trouble with it. Juliana from The Blank Garden has added an amazing discussion on whether IM is a philosophical novelist, centring on this book, here. Any more reviews or links to reviews on people’s blogs and Goodreads accounts will be shared them here when they come in.

So if you have comments to make or links to blog posts to post, you can put them here or (better still) on the review. Oh, and do pop over to my “Flight from the Enchanter” round-up where I’ve just had to add a picture of the very sweet Penguin I acquired the other week.

“A Severed Head”

Moving on to our March read, this is, almost inexplicably, the first Iris Murdoch novel I read, at the age of 14 (an only child who went to an all girls’ school and led a pretty sheltered life), and which got me hooked on IM. What on earth did I make of it? It was loaned to me by my lovely neighbour, Mary, who was a bastion of left-wing, wine-making, vegtable-growing, borrow-any-book-on-my-shelfness who introduced me to so many of my still-favourite authors.

I have four copies: the hardback first edition, a 1964 Penguin whose cover I LOVE, a 1984 Triad Granada which I bought in about 1986, and the new Vintage edition.

I loved reading the blurbs, as they all seem to riff off each other. Here’s the first edition first:

It’s great that it’s so enthusiastic, but the references to Treasure Island and Adolphe I find a little odd.  Moving on to the orange Penguin:

I love the comparison to Jacobean tragedy and Restoration comedy on that one. The Triad Granada was a bit more restrained, but still full of the Daily Mail:

… and the Vintage has a puff from Elizabeth Jane Howard of all people, and a mixture of all the previous blurbs.

So, are you going to be reading or re-reading “A Severed Head” along with me? Which was your first Iris Murdoch novel and which was the one that got you hooked?

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You will find a page listing all of these blog posts here, updated as I go along.

Book review – David Goldblatt – “The Games” #amreading #books

Goodness me, a long gap with few reviews – I’ve been busily buried in Substantial Books, and have had an awful lot of work on, too, which has caused a bit of a perfect storm in the reading and reviewing department. Rather horrifically, it’s almost time for my Iris Murdoch round-up then Mount TBR time again, and I really don’t think it’s changed at all from the February picture, apart from having swapped “The Bell” for “The Unicorn” on the Murdoch Pile. Anyway, here’s a book my friend Meg kindly and cleverly gave me for my birthday last year: she knows I’m a bit obsessed with the Olympics and, indeed, it was a good time to be finishing this one off, watching the Winter Olympics!

David Goldblatt – “The Games”

(21 January 2017)

An exhaustive history of the Olympic Games, covering the founding of the modern Olympic movement and then going through every single summer and winter games, although concentrating more on the bidding, construction and political processes than anything but the most stand-out athletic performances. It’s already a big book and can’t be all things to all people, and it was fascinating to read all the well-researched detail.

The events of the Games are set well against the sweep of history, social movements and changes (or not, in the case of some sports) in social make-up of athlete groups. It treats the fascinating figure of the Baron De Coubertin in great detail, and his successors as head of the IOC in moderate amounts of detail, too. The first modern games amusingly gave birth to many of the modern tropes: will it be ready in time, feelings suddenly switching to the positive and massive media attention. It was interesting to learn that the first Games were very much adjuncts to a series of World Fairs and had to struggle to disentangle themselves from them.

Bigger topics such as women’s sporting events are introduced when they become salient and then have a section of a chapter devoted to them – it’s hard to see how else the author could have done this in a chronological treatment like this but it does lead to a bit of hopping backwards and forwards. It’s interesting to see alternatives such as trade union games, but unfortunately the Paralympics only gets a couple of paragraphs and inexplicably gets missed out of the index.

The book doesn’t shy away from the controversial and tragic or violent moments, whether that be Munich and Atlanta or various suppressions of popular movements or destruction of poor people’s housing to make way for stadiums. It looks interestingly at the role of televised media and the media sales and sponsorship that came with it, but seems to become more and more concerned with the corruption of, in turn, the IOC, the voting system, the political movements to put cities forward as hosts, the machinations of the tendering and construction processes and the athletes with their drug regimes. This and the more recent history of protests against the Games are important to know about and discuss, but the book seems to turn into one very long expose, with very few positives at all by the time we get to London 2012. I just can’t (bear to?) think that the whole thing is completely rotten from top to bottom. Knowing volunteers and officials in athletics, this seems a bit too one-sided.

The book redeems itself with details of the origin stories of the new extreme winter sports, with the lifestyles of the freeform skiers and snowboarders being rather different from the norm.

A carefully researched book which is full of interest and perhaps tries to do too many things in one book.

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I’m in the middle of reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, which I had to pause while I waited for my new glasses to come, as the normal print is small and the additional information TINY – thank you ASDA opticians, who ramped up the reading part of my prescription and enabled me to continue reading it. I also have the Very Large “Rise Up, Women”, a history of the suffragette movement, to read for Shiny New Books. First new one to start will be Iris Murdoch’s “A Severed Head”, and with that I’ll be off to take pictures of all my copies …

Book review – Iris Murdoch – “The Bell” #IMReadalong

This is such a funny one for me to review. Because I studied it for half of my research project (find out more here), I know more about what other people think of this book than certainly any other Murdoch, and probably any other book in the world. The thing that surprised me most about the outcomes of getting 25 book groups to read the book is that so many of them saw it through the lens of modern-day events and preoccupations, some describing Michael as a predatory paedophile, with many fewer taking exception to the much more clearly evidenced instance of drunk driving. While there has been writing about Michael (notably by Pamela Osborn) I still push back against his actively predatory nature.

Reader Peter Rivenberg has sent me some fabulous cover images from his copies, including our first French one! The first one has an image from the BBC production, which I’ve never seen. Is that supposed to be Dora and Paul?

Do please share any other cover images you’ve got of your copies of this one – although surely there can’t be any MORE editions? Tweet them to me, pop them on Facebook for my attention or use the email address you can find on my Contact Form.

Iris Murdoch – “The Bell”

(14 October 2017)

Another delight to read (fortunately – I think I’ve settled in to realising I’m not going to come to the conclusion I’ve stopped loving IM’s novels now). And once again, my allegiances have shifted. I used to think Dora was the heroine, and she is allowed to grow and change and develop into service and perhaps deeper thought and less frivolousness. I’d completely forgotten that she actually had an affair with Noel, and IM is pretty horrible to her, with lots of asides of things like of course she hadn’t bothered to look up the railway timetable. I used to have more time for Michael, but I became annoyed with the way he falls into issues and scenes because of not thinking things through or considering the consequences, surely an example of IM’s keenness on ‘attention’. We see his thought processes over Nick and Toby, changing his mind and bringing himself round to be in the right. But I can’t see him as predatory or an actual paedophile as such, as Nick is 15 (yes, I know, but we’re not talking children) and Toby 18. He is also described as “having no time for philosophical speculation” (p. 118) just as he starts examining what it is to be good. I used to find Mrs Mark amusing, but she’s AWFUL, isn’t she. Coy and passive-aggressive and just dreadful.

Of course I still love the nuns, aquatic and otherwise, with their no-nonsense good humour and firm but simple faith. They pay attention to what’s necessary and step in only when needed.

The Murdoch themes are all there, curly hair, cut hair, twins / siblings, stones, water, complicated arrangements, the contrast of London and the country. There are lots of echoes, from the three sermons (James’, Michael’s and Nick’s twisted one) and Dora loses her shoes twice, there are two bells, and Imber and the Abbey, of course.

There’s humour again, of course, as there always is (isn’t there?). For example, Dora on the train:

She decided not to give up her seat.

She got up and said to the standing lady, ‘Do sit down here, please. I’m not going very far, and I’d much rather stand anyway.’ (p. 11)

I find Dora’s reaction to her first sight of the nuns really funny, too:

… she now made out with an unpleasant shock a shapeless pile of squatting black cloth that must be a nun. (p. 28)

The use of the word “rebarbative” was noted by my group of friends who did the last chronological read, and by my study participants. But what I hadn’t realised is that it’s only ever Toby who is associated with this word, which serves to remind us when we’re seeing things through his eyes. This reminded me that certain scenes are also only seen through the eyes of a perhaps more unreliable narrator, Michael. So even though there’s supposed to be an omniscient narrator here, we are constantly in the characters’ heads, meaning that truth shifts and can be doubted.

There are some lovely little nods to other novels. Hugo Bellfounder cast the original bell (cf. “Under the Net”). When Dora leaves Catherine in the garden, picking apricots, she refers to her as “the figure under the net” (p. 70). And we have yet another chase of a women in pale garments in the darkness of a forest, when Dora pursues Catherine.

Who is the enchanter in this novel? Well, the Bell itself certainly enchants Dora,

She had communed with it now for too long and was under its spell. She had thought to be its master and make it her plaything, but now it was mastering her and would have its will. (p. 277)

and Michael seems to attract devotion, but only perhaps from those who are unstable in one way or another (Catherine, about to break down, and Toby, still sorting out his own personality; I don’t think Dora counts as she loves him at the end of the book in a different and perhaps purer way).

The saints are not easy to find, either. Perhaps Patchway is our saint – when we first meet him, he’s described as

A dirty looking man with a decrepit hat on, who looked as if he did not belong and was indifferent to not belonging. (p. 33)

He is described later has having the ability to stand by and say nothing, “and yet existing, large, present, and at ease” (p. 152) and at the climax of the procession scene, stands deliberately in a place where he can’t see.

Perhaps Tallis is shadowing my readings, but dirt and indifference to tend to make a saint. James feels like an early foreshadowing of James Arrowby and other soldiers, but he’s very rigid in his beliefs as well as being humble. Peter Topglass communes with animals and seems to have a magic touch with birds, and also exhibits

… detachment, his absorption in his beloved studies, his absence of competitive vanity … he was a person who, like Chaucer’s gentle knight, was remarkable for harming no one. (p. 124)

Neither Patchway or Topglass do anything but absorb events then pass on through their own lives, not passing on any pain, a sure sign of a Murdochian saint. James has to go back to his vigorous Doing Good in the East End (does he run into Henry or Carel, I wonder?).

AS Byatt’s introduction to this novel in my edition is so long, scholarly and full of references that it would take an essay to write about it itself, so I’m going to leave it here. What a rich, satisfying and memorable read this was.  I’m glad it was the one I introduced my book groups to.

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OK, over to you! Please either place your review in the comments, discuss mine or others’, or post a link to your review if you’ve posted it on your own blog, Goodreads, etc. I’d love to know how you’ve got on with this book and if you read it having read others of Murdoch’s novels or this was a reread, I’d love to hear your specific thoughts on those aspects, as well as if it’s your first one!

If you’re catching up or looking at the project as a whole, do take a look at the project page, where I list all the blog posts so far.

Book review – Jaron Lanier – “Dawn of the New Everything: A Journey Through Virtual Reality” @ShinyNewBooks @RealJaronLainer @TheBodleyHead

I read this fascinating book around my recent Cornwall holiday (alas, the lovely hardback was too substantial to take down on the train) and was racing to get back to it on my return. It’s a personal history, musing and philosophical discourse (but readable and engaging) by a fascinating and well-known founding parent of Virtual Reality, and in the way of these things, I then found myself editing a reference to it in the bibliography of an academic thesis and talking with an air of knowledge about, “Well, of course, even a wire-grid world can be immersive and wonderful if only you get the tracking right and minimise delay” when talking about a friend’s recent VR experience here in my home city!

And, the author is prosopagnosiac, like me! There might have been a small whoop when I read that bit.

Thank you to Bodley Head for sending me a copy to review for Shiny New Books, and you can read my full review here.

Good cholesterol news!

I don’t often write about my anti-high-cholesterol regime here, although I’ve reviewed a number of cheeses and restaurants under the High Cholesterol category. I had high cholesterol diagnosed a good number of years ago now (2010!), but the doctor gave me sixth months to bring it down, which I managed to do. I have annual blood tests because I’m on a very low-dose blood pressure tablet, and we make sure to test my total cholesterol plus “good” HDL and triglycerides so I can monitor it. I didn’t have this test last year as I had a blood panel as part of an operation I had, so two years without one and JUST after a holiday in Cornwall when the odd scone may have been involved, I was a bit nervous about my results.

According to the HeartUK website:

Total Cholesterol (TC): this is the total amount of cholesterol in your blood.  Ideally it should be 5 mmol/L* or less. mine is 5.3, however, see below, the extra is made up of “good” cholesterol.

HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol) should be over 1.2 mmol/L for a woman and over 1 mmol/L for a man. Higher levels confer more protection against heart disease. My HDL level is 1.82 mmol/L, accounting for the extra 0.3 on the total and a bit more.

Non HDL-Cholesterol: this is your total cholesterol minus your HDL-cholesterol (good cholesterol) and is the sum of all the  “bad” cholesterols added together (including LDL cholesterol) – ideally it should be 4 mmol/L* or less. Mine is 3.48 mmol/L.

Fasting triglyceride levels should be below 1.7 mmol/L for both men and women. Non fasting triglycerides should be below 2.3 mmol/L. My non-fasting triglycerides are 1.00 mmol/L. Hooray!

I have got and kept my cholesterol levels down through a careful dietary regime (gleaned from the Heart UK advice, which is still to eat plenty of brown carbs, fruit and veg (and oats!) and keep the saturated fat down).  My long-distance running also helps promote good cholesterol. This has personally worked for me: there is alternative advice out there talking about low carbs and sugars, however personally this works and has worked for a number of other people. I did write a book about this which has helped a good few people (making it clear to consult a GP first and that this is only one option) and you can read more about the book and my regime, if you’re interested, here.

So if you’re a friend or family member and I make a fuss about what and where I eat, this is why (turns out, if you don’t eat much fat you get really uncomfortable side-effects when you do eat it!) and why I’m comfortable staying with that behaviour. And I’m quite proud of myself for being able to get and keep it down.

Back to the books soon, don’t worry!

 

New books in and reading progress #amreading @BloomsburyBooks

Just a quick hello as nothing finished to review just yet, or on the horizon as promising to be finished!

I did finish Jaron Lanier’s “Dawn of the New Everything” which was a fascinating book on the development of Virtual Reality which I have read and submitted my review for Shiny New Books – I’ll let you know when that’s out. I had to have a hiatus on that one while on holiday last week as I took slimmer (or e-) books that could be left at the holiday cottage, but got it finished at the weekend.

Next up for review for Shiny is this lovely: a comprehensive review of  the lives of the suffragettes, of course published to coincide with the centenary of some women getting the vote for the first time. It’s a lovely substantial book I’m really going to enjoy getting into, although I was a bit flummoxed when SUCH a huge parcel arrived. Thank you Bloomsbury Books for that one!

I managed to only buy ONE book on holiday as I didn’t really go through the charity shops so much. But I couldn’t resist popping into lovely Newlyn Books, in Penzance (see a photo of the shop on my post from my visit in 2016), where I found this sweet copy of “Mrs Harris Goes to New York” by Paul Gallico. I loved “Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris” so this had to be snapped up.

Nothing has been requested from NetGalley recently – aren’t I good! I’m up to an 82% review rate again after my last review – phew!

I’m currently reading David Goldblatt’s “The Games” again (after a pause for Shiny-ness) and I’m getting up to the 60s now so almost to the ones I remember. Quite timely as the Winter Olympics start. I was reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral” but the type is so small and my new glasses should come soon, so I’m putting that aside until I can see it. Next up will be Iris Murdoch’s “The Bell” for my #IMReadalong – I can’t wait to get that started, probably at the weekend.

Any booky news where you are?

Book review – Joanna Nadin “The Queen of Bloody Everything” #amreading #QueenOfBloodyEverything #NetGalley

A novel I read on the way home from our recent holiday on my Kindle, and it was perfect for that. Thank you to Pan MacMillan for making it available via NetGalley and approving me to read it in return for an honest review. What a fabulous cover, by the way, which really takes in the 70s start of the book and partly hippie ethos.

Joanna Nadin – “The Queen of Bloody Everything”

(Downloaded 12 January 2018; published 08 February 2018)

Dido, originally unwanted daughter of the rackety, fascinating Edie, falls in love at first sight with the conspicuously normal family who live over the back fence of the house they move into upon a sudden and saving inheritance. Edie’s come from a mixed line of conventional and unconventional folk, and I loved that it was an eccentric aunt who lifted them just above the poverty line. While Dido is frantically learning how to fit in, Harry, the daughter of the house, is copying Edie and wanting a mum just like her – and indeed, pretty well the only mother-like action Edie takes relates to Harry and not Dido. Meanwhile unreachable Tom hovers in Dido’s mind as the perfect man who she’s determined but not quite brave enough to capture (and I read him as gay for a little while, actually).

I loved the set pieces in the novel and how they related to the times the characters go through – Dido is a couple of years older than me, so I can remember the events and feelings and things she experiences very well. The best set piece is when some of Edie’s London friends come to visit at a moment where all Dido wants to do is fit in with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee street party – but she’s by turns horrified and exhilarated when an out and proud lesbian and two black guys come striding through their very monocultural neighbourhood to claim her as their own. The reactions of the mothers and other children is so well done. I also love the character of Edie’s best friend, Toni, always there, even in her 60s with purple hair, a fabulous character.

Dido is written so well, her language changing as she grows up, which is very convincing (Nadin was previously a YA author and this shows in her confident command of the early and teenage years – I felt it became a little less inventive in Dido’s 20s, perhaps reading a bit too like novels like “One Day”). The drama and family happenings and character development are set cleverly against nationwide events in the 1970s to 200s, and life in Saffron Walden is contrasted with life in London – I loved the ideas of “going back” which came through here. It feels a little autobiographical, especially near the end, but the relationships are sharply drawn and believable as a novel, making a good, page-turning read.

I also loved the emphasis on reading subtly woven through the book, and the children’s book chapter headings. And when Dido comes to her turning point, she’s cheeringly buoyed by both her favourite female characters from classic literature and her mum’s no-bullshit attitude, to great effect.

A note on the title: I know quite a few readers don’t like swear words in books and might be put off by the title. There’s as much swearing in the book as you’d expect given the context and the title is drawn from a very believable event near the start of the book. I hope it doesn’t lose it readers as I’d be happy to recommend this book.

Book review – Veronica Chambers – “Kickboxing Geishas” plus a DNF #amreading #books

My last two holiday reads in a bit of a catch-up: I’m horribly aware I did double posts over the last two days (Wednesday’s were at least on two different blogs) so I’m sorry if I’ve bombarded you and can promise you things will be back to normal from now! So here’s a book I enjoyed and one that came all the way over the sea to be skim read and left by the sea!

Veronica Chambers – “Kickboxing Geishas”

(22 July 2017, via BookCrossing, through Sian)

Published in 2007, so a little dated now, this book, subtitled “How Modern Japanese Women are Changing their Nation” takes an interesting look at various facets of Japanese women’s experience, whether of costume, travel and return, dating, work, entrepreneurship or traditional marriage, how these have perhaps changed and the women’s in-depth lived experiences. She travelled to Japan a number of times and subsumed herself into the culture with an anthropologist’s eye, having written other books on women’s experiences in the US: it was reasonably well put together but there were some odd orderings (words used a few chapters before they were explained; repetitions of explanations and comments) which made me think the book had perhaps been constructed out of a series of articles or even blog posts. This did dislocate the reading experience at times, but on the whole it was a good and engaging read.

It’s also fair-minded, and where the Japanese women seem to criticise Japanese men quite heavily for, in effect, not having moved with the times, and the author describes the common “Narita divorce” (a couple get back from honeymoon where the man couldn’t cope and the woman leaves him at the airport) and mature divorce (a salaryman retires and his wife gets sick of him), she does talk to men, too, and argues on their behalf.

The book talks of the Asian bubble and subsequent crash but of course doesn’t reach the most recent financial crisis, and it would be interesting to see how things have changed during and since that time – have conservatism and populism risen there, as they have elsewhere, for example?

Eileen Myles – “The Importance of being Iceland”

(04 November  2017, via BookCrossing, from Cari)

A book of essays on travel, mainly in Iceland, and art which was oddly written and I found unengaging – I skimmed for the bits about Iceland but didn’t read it properly. A shame, as Cari had sent it all the way from New York! It’s from the Semiotext(e) imprint of MIT so I fear maybe a little academic for me.

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I’m currently reading “The Queen of Bloody Everything” by Joanna Nadin, a NetGalley book published on 8 February, a coming of age novel about a girl with a rather rackety mum being sucked into the orbit of a fascinating other family. There’s a dual time aspect in that the narrator seems to be telling it to her hospitalised mum, and it’s good and engaging so far. Plus the big book on Virtual Reality, of course! What are you up to with your early February reading?

Book review – Jenni Murray – “A History of Britain in 21 Women” #amreading #books

I’ve wickedly promoted this one to the top of the pile because so many people seem to have read it recently, or rather so many people I know, because my friends’ Very Small Book Group read it for their January read. Heaven-Ali reviewed it the other week. So i grabbed it from my birthday pile to read OUT OF ORDER (shock). It was a January read for me, too, but scheduling has got a bit complicated!

Jenni Murray – “A History of Britain in 21 Women”

(21 January 2018, from Sian)

This is subtitled “A Personal Selection”, which of course neatly allows Murray to sidestep the inevitable criticism over who she chooses to include and who she leaves out of her 21 chapters; indeed, she does mention other options she had (Shirley Williams, Florence Nightingale) and explains why she didn’t choose them in some of the pieces. She also often mentions her personal connections to the women, from seeing the sculpture of Boadicea as a child to interviewing Nancy Astor, Barbara Castle and Margaret Thatcher; this and the fairly informal tone of the book do make it warm and approachable, as if she is indeed telling you about some favourite figures.

Unfortunately, the informal tone of the book is carried over into the feature which has shocked a few readers I know (and was literally underlined in this copy, which made me smile): Murray fairly often references works of fiction when telling the stories of her subjects – a novel I’ve never heard of about Boadicea, fairly famously, a Philippa Gregory novel in the chapter on Elizabeth I, and a drama documentary about Mrs Thatcher. This just seems odd to me, as there has been plenty of well-researched non-fiction written about these people. There are also no references or bibliography at all, but acknowledgements given to people who helped her keep the facts straight. But, after all, its a “personal selection”.

The Fanny Burney, again fairly notoriously, includes vivid primary source accounts of an operation, but this is well-signposted, with an exhortation to “[b]e brave and read on” (I didn’t). It is good in general and I learned about Mary Somerville (her of the college) and at last worked out that Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Millicent Garrett Fawcett were sisters, which had always somewhat eluded me. A decent introductory read, but further reading could easily have been enabled with better referencing.

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Next up is a book called “Kickboxing Geishas” about women in modern Japan, which was passed to me with slightly mixed reviews …

State of the TBR – February 2018

Oh, the terrible state of the TBR, post-Christmas and -birthday! In fact, it was worse than this, but I pulled a few books off it that were either BookCrossing registered or quick reads to take with me on a trip, so there is at least some wiggle room at the end … But The Pile has had to encroach onto husband Matthew’s shelf (shock, horror!).

I’m currently reading Veronica Chambers’ “Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women are Changing their Nation” and a book on at in Iceland, and you’ll see a review of Jenni Murray’s “A History of Britain in 21 Women” later today, otherwise I won’t get all my reviews in. I’m also getting on with Jaron Lanier’s “Dawn of the New Everything” for Shiny New Books (and I have a fab book on women’s suffrage activists to go for Shiny next; there’s a whole crop of these to celebrate the centenary of people like me being able to vote in the UK). Then coming up, I didn’t do a photo because it’s pretty well the same as last month, with seemingly just two books having left the shelf, so Bruce, Frazzled, The Hate U Give and the history of Rough Trade all jostling for attention. First to start after finishing any of the current ones will, however, be Iris Murdoch’s “The Bell”, this month’s #IMReadalong novel.

What are your February reading plans?