Me And My Big Mouth

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Ten

So now we are down to the nitty gritty. The ins and outs. The Mullerian and the Wolffian. The gonads of the novel.

I find the medical explanations fascinating but, strangely, having waited so long for them I don't really think I need them. If they had appeared at the beginning then I would have welcomed their arrival and felt set up for the rest of the book. As it is, they seem superfluous.

Still interesting though. As is Dr. Luce. Nutter.

However, the final medical report and Callie's response were real humdingers. I really didn't see the latter coming.

Things really are getting rather good, aren't they?

Two more chapters tomorrow and then on to the final push.

Non

I don't read a great deal of non-fiction.

I am not entirely sure why. I am quite a fast reader when it comes to fiction but I have to force myself to slow down with non-fiction to make sure I take in all the, you know, facts and stuff. That might have something to do with it.

Most of my favourite books are novels, although I have greatly enjoyed many a book that wasn't. Jonathan Coe's biography of B.S. Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant, is a masterpiece, and The Vagabond's Breakfast by Richard Gwyn was one of my favourite books of last year, to offer just two examples.

I'd like to read more, though. I need to, I think. Would be good for the brain.

Any suggestions?

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Nine

It only just dawned on me as I closed the book at the end of The Gun on the Wall that we don't have long left to go. Just over 100 pages. 7 chapters.

I have greatly enjoyed reading along with everyone. The discipline of putting the book down at the end of each day's required chapters (yes, I know some have read ahead, but that's fine) has forced me to digest the book more slowly, allowing it to sink in. Ordinarily I would have finished the book by now but I think I appreciate it more for taking my time.

This last batch of chapters do at last bring us to the matter in hand, the actual story which I had assumed the whole book was about - Cal's discovery that (s)he is a hermaphrodite. And, in many ways, this has been my favourite bit so far. We have spent so much time with him as a narrator that I am glad to finally hear his story.

The depiction of first love is bittersweet and quite marvelous. Lots of stunning set pieces - that Greek tragedy! - and some lovely images and lines to mull over.

As most of you know, our first social reading experiment was with The Blind Assassin and I find many parallels between the two books, especially in the way the narrators reveal the family histories and also their own stories over time.

But that's enough bollocks from me, the really interesting stuff always appears in the comments and I can't wait to find out what you made of your weekend's reading.

Oh, and I am going to suggest we go 2-2-3 this week. Two chapters tomorrow, two more and Tuesday and we finish the thing on Wednesday with a burst of three. Hope that is OK.

A Song for Sunday

A cover of Talking Heads' This Must Be The Place played on traditional Chinese instruments by Matteo.

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Eight

So, seeing as we have given ourselves all weekend to finish Book Three I thought I'd use today's post to be sociable.

Hello.

If you are taking part in our social reading experiment please leave a comment to say hello today. You don't need to say anything else but it would be nice to know who is taking part, or roughly how many.

Feel free to let us know if you are enjoying the process (or not), if are you ahead of or behind the pace, or any other nuggets of interest.

What has been your favourite bit so far?

Care to speculate as to how things will pan out (I think Cal will end up with Julie)?

Whatever you say, do say something, it would be good hear from you.

And happy reading this weekend.

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Seven

And so we meet a new character - a house. The titular house, no less. I had assumed that the title of the book referred to the ambiguous gender of its narrator alone, but it appears that it also refers to the new family home. Sounds like a cool pad, and Eugenides gives us an MTV Cribs style tour.

Was pleased to see this line about Lefty, which pretty much sums up my own view on life and death:

'the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more.'

But then I had a senior moment myself when Peter Tatakis was mentioned and I realised I didn't have a clue who he was. Does anyone else get this sometimes? You are a fair way through a book and a character gets mentioned, in a manner which suggests they should be familiar to you, but you cannot for the life of you remember them? Anyway, someone tell me who he is. Thank you.

A bit disappointed that Cal has let things slip with Julie but I reckon she'll be back later. I hope so.

Also disappointed that Chapter Eleven's skills with a hot dog didn't extend to a bender in a bun.

And when do we find out why he has such a stupid name?

We then move on to much more about Cal as a girl and young woman, I feel that we are leaving the family saga bahind now and starting on the story I had assumed the book was about before I bothered to open it. The author keeps teasing us with glimpses of the big reveal - when will she find out she is also a he?

Five more chapters left in this section. Shall we try to complete them over the weekend?

Demob Unhappy

My mission to read all of the Brian Adliss books I am reissuing (background info here) before I actually reissue them continues with the final instalment of the Horatio Stubbs trilogy.

The Hand-Reared Boy saw Stubbs wanking his way through his teenage years. A Soldier Erect followed him in to World War II (lots of shagging at the beginning but then some really quite devastating battle scenes towards the end). A Rude Awakening is set in Sumatra after the war has ended, Stubbs is waiting to go back to Blighty and is killing time by shagging a Chinese woman and shooting crocodiles, neither of which end well.

It is a bleak book. Stubbs is torn between marrying Margey, his Chinese fancy lady who may or may not be a whore, and bringing her home with him or dumping her and buggering off back alone. He is bored, fed up and irritable, picking fights with his fellow servicemen and generally having a miserable time. Sumatra itself is humid and dangerous, with the Indonesian independence movement shooting Dutch soldiers whenever the opportunity arrives, something Aldiss captures splendidly with the frustrated, sweaty tone of Stubbs narration.

A Rude Awakening is not as funny or sexy as its predecessors but it still packs a punch and contains one or two unforgettable scenes. The whole series is, supposedly, loosely autobiographical which makes my visits to Chez Aldiss all the more interesting, tempted as I am to ask him about various episodes contained within the books (although I haven't yet plucked up the courage to do so).

I am issuing The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy as ebooks (3 separate volumes plus an omnibus), another publisher has the print rights, and do so in July. It will be interesting to see how a modern reader takes to these books, which were quite controversial when they were first published.

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Six

I liked this very much:

(The sea wrack Milton hoses from the sidewalk every morning includes the dead jellyfish of prophylactics and the occasional hermit crab of a lost high heel.)

And I find myself in much the same frame of mind as I was with our last social reading experiment (a few of us read The Blind Assassin last month) - a great story well-told with a sprinkling of wonderful lines and paragraphs that really stand out.

I am enjoying the snippets from Cal at the opening of each chapter and I did smile when Milton decided to let the diner burn down and collect the insurance money (those policies mentioned earlier in the book were the loaded guns that needed to go off in this act.)

And your good selves? What did you think?

I am going to read the next three chapters tomorrow, if you are up for it?

Guest Blogger: Darren Craske

Many thanks to Scott for allowing me to set out my stall in his front garden (so to speak). As things stand, I have a lot to thank Mr Pack for. Not only because of his support and faith in my series of Victorian-set fantasy/detective/adventure series The CORNELIUS QUAINT CHRONICLES but also faith in me as one of his band of authors for The Friday Project/Harpercollins.

I suffer from a condition some writers might be envious of, and that’s an abundance of ideas. It’s not something that I generally think of as a problem per se, but it can get awfully frustrating waiting for a book to come out, knowing that you’ve got loads more stacked up that might never see the light of day. Some are completed and ready to go, whereas some are in various states of undress, and on top of all them, I am also continually writing new ones too...

So when Scott and I spoke a while back about the direction of my career (and I use the word loosely) he advised me to look into indie/self-publishing as a way to clear the decks, as well as forge a new direction in an area that has surprised many. I’m still a newbie at the indie-publishing game (with only one book out so far, details below) but already I am feeling rejuvenated as an author. At certain times in my career (there’s that word again) I have found myself writing for other people instead of myself and it didn’t work out. I went through the whole “Am I really any good?” phase – probably after being slaughtered by those pesky Amazon reviewers – and now I'm in the “Yes, I am actually, and I’ll prove it” phase, which is a much better place to be.

My first release as an indie-published author is ‘The Lantern Menace’, a traditional Middle Grade/YA fantasy quest with a nontraditional twist. Okay, so there’s a stubborn Princess – CHECK. A wise wizard – CHECK. A heroic stable-boy – CHECK. Evil forces plotting against them - CHECK but there’s also plenty of humour, adventure, surprises, shocks and (if I can be so bold) balls-to-the-wall action.

It’s very much me. As if someone reached into my head and pulled out everything that I love about Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and comic books, and moulded it into a nutritious patty before frying it with onions, adding a generous slice of cheese and slapping it in an ebook-shaped bun. What’s more, it’s cheap!

If you (or if your Middle Grade/YA kids) love fantasy books without all the fluff and histrionics, then ‘The Lantern Menace’ is definitely for you (them). There is plenty to enjoy and I hope that readers take it to their hearts as much as I have.

The Lantern Menace is available right now from the Kindle store for only £1.02. Or for other eReader platforms such as iPad, please visit my author page at Smashwords. And if anyone fancies getting in touch, perhaps telling of successes and pitfalls of indie-publishing, my email address is corneliusquaint@hotmail.com, or I also tweet @DarrenCraske my Facebook page is here, and I am on Goodreads.

Thank you!

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Five

Polished off Book Two today. How about you?

I realise some of you are reading ahead, and others not quite at this point yet, but that's OK. As long as people are happy to check in here and share their thoughts then that's just fine.

We jumped a few years here, didn't we? All of a sudden Tessie and Milton are grown ups and courting via clarinet. I am constantly reminded of John Irving while reading this, the little oddities that are dotted around this family drama, some of which are already starting to come back with forceful resonance, are strikingly similar to his novels. And that's a good thing.

Not my favourite portion of the book, though, the next two chapters. Quite workmanlike, I thought. Although the way Eugenides brought everything full circle by the end - 'Desdemona and Lefty came back to where they started' - was a neat touch.

I await your thoughts.

Heads Up!

Driving Jarvis Ham on The Reading Room

The first twenty minutes of Siren FM's book show The Reading Room was given over to Driving Jarvis Ham recently. There is an interview with Jim Bob and then their reading group get to grips with the novel.

You can listen here:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Enjoy!

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Four

So today I read two chapters, Marriage on Ice and Tricknology. I intend to finish Book Two tomorrow.

It's a shame about Desdemona and Lefty's marriage. Neither is really to blame. She is worried about dodgy genes and he can't work out why she won't be intimate with him any more. Having forgiven them their incest I feel a tad let down that things have gone to pot. It wasn't a happy chapter, the first of the two, although it was again full of wonderful scene setting and description; the Nation of Islam passages were particularly fine.

The twist at the end of these two chapters was fun, although the rule that unless you see a dead body then a character cannot be dead comes into play here.

This book is really not what I expected at all. It is a great family saga and I am looking forward to seeing where the author takes it next.

So, how many of you have read the author's other books and how do you think this compares?

Kapow!

This is Kapow!

It is the latest book published by Visual Editions. They do weird and wonderful things with packaging and format and type. It is a novel by Adam Thirlwell and appears (I have only dipped in so far) to be about the Arab Spring.

This line from the blurb explains a bit more.

Kapow! asks readers to open and unfold pages, to follow text leaking in and out of paragraphs, while progressively becoming part of and lost within the narrator's giddy digressions.

Essentially this means that nearly every page has something unusual going on with the text with paragraphs overlapping each other, text placed upside down or  chapters extending onto gatefold pullouts. It should be annoying but you get used to it very quickly.

What I don't know yet is whether or not the content is as interesting as the form.

It certainly looks wonderful, though, and in the war of print vs. ebooks this is certainly one score to Gutenberg.

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Three

Book Two. The first two chapters.

Things I like: Sourmelina (she's great). The way Eugenides arranges the conversations between the two couples so that they overlap. The first kiss in the open air in America. The production line. The return of the doctor.

Things I didn't like so much: the heavyhanded symbolism (the minotaur), even though the narrator kind of acknowledges it. Er, that's about it.

I am struck by how different this book is, so for, to how I imagined in. I assumed it was all about Cal but I enjoy a good family saga so am pleased about how things are going so far.

And your good selves?

Four Lost Stories

You may recall I got all excited about a long out-of-print science fiction book I read a few weeks back called The Road to Corlay. Well, that novel was based on a short story (quite a long story, as it happens) in this earlier collection so I hunted it down and have been dipping into it over the past few days.

I won't post a long review here as I have reviewed each of the separate stories (there are only four of them) over at my other blog, but in brief:

The Custodians. A small group of Spanish monks in a remote hillside monastery guard perhaps the greatest secret in history. Chilling.

Paradise Beach. A rich banker becomes obsessed with a lifelike futuristic painting. Very Tales of the Unexpected.

Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The prequel to The Road to Corlay, and every bit as magical as the novel.

The Hertford Manuscript. A 17th century book hides the journal of a 19th century time traveller. Great fun.

The Custodians by Richard Cowper is not currently available in print but you can pick up secondhand copies online for not very much money. A copy would be, in my opinion, a wise investment.

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day Two

I knew nothing about the Great Fire of Smyrna but, blimey, reading about it was a bit harrowing. Some mighty fine writing though.

I thought the opening of chapter three, with Cal in the present day, was quite wonderful, with the descriptions of how Calliope, his female side, would sometimes make herself known.

Callie rises up inside me, wearing my skin like a loose robe.

Also intrigued by the inclusion of the lines from The Waste Land which refer to both Smyrna and a Mr Eugenides, I wonder if these inspired the novel in some way?

Chapter four opens with a lovely image of the balls of yarn being held by Greeks leaving on ships for America while their loved ones stood on the shore holding the other ends. He's shoehorned in the old thread-as-metaphor thing but done it so beautifully I didn't really mind.

I enjoyed the fake courtship on board and the way Book One ends with the newlyweds on the verge of entering America. This is all really good stuff so far. What did you think?

Oh, a few people have asked if we can take three days over Book Two as it is quite long. I am keen to keep up all reasonably together in terms of pace and page numbers so that is fine with me. I am going to try to finish the next two chapters tomorrow and will report back here.

Over to you.

A Song for Sunday

Waitress by Boy.

Social Reading: Middlesex: Day One

We have given ourselves the weekend to read Book One, is everyone OK with that? I've managed the first two chapters so far and we are off to a pretty good start. Nothing had blown me away until I got to the end of chapter two - let me know what you thought of that development - but I am now sufficiently intrigued and looking forward to discussing the book with you all.

Some initial thoughts.

Names. Why do novelists, especially acclaimed literary novelists, seem to go for such weird names? I know we have a Greek family here so Calliope is perhaps not that unusual (?) but we've had a Desdemona, Tessie Zizmo, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Cleopatra so far. Also, Calliope's brother appears to be called Chapter Eleven.  I realise this won't be his real name but we've been given no explanation for it.

Love these few lines which clearly foreshadow (or telegraph!) what is to come.

And then we have that event at the end of the second chapter. I won't put a spoiler here but we should feel free to discuss it in the comments. Most interesting.

So, please share your thoughts by leaving a comment here. Or join in the chat on Twitter by using the hashtag #middlesex.

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