Meanwhile, in March…

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Rachel

noreallifeI can’t quite believe that it was over a month ago that I last posted here.  I am actively back writing fiction now, and that occupies a great chunk of my brain so that I find writing about ‘real life’ a hard thing to do because my imagination must be pulling brain cells from other sections :)    So, in ‘previously on…’ fashion I shall update you on the last month.

The big news (well, as far as I’m concerned, other things have happened), is that I was supposed to have my surgery on 8th March, but after I posted an almost Venusian blood pressure reading and didn’t get it down in time, the surgeon pulled me from his list at the end of February.  I have now resumed my place on the list after getting my blood pressure back down on planet Earth, but it’s looking like May now.  Best guess is that it’ll now collide nicely with a family visiting from America, DD’s GCSEs and Simon going to Canada.  So that’ll be fun!  Never a dull moment here.

Speaking of GCSE’s, DD is now counting down the weeks until she finishes Year 11.  Time was when the end of this school year at 16 was the moment many gained their freedom, but the school leaving age is in the process of rising to 18 and DD’s year are the first batch for whom it’s compulsory for them to stay on for another year.  The school leaving age in the UK goes up to 18 in 2015.  She didn’t have any plans to leave anyway and she’s hoping to get the necessary GCSE’s to stay on at school to do A Levels.  What those A Level’s will finally look like we’re not sure, but she’s hoping Dance and Drama will be two of them.

Not having Sky TV means that we’ve had to wait a very long time until Season 2 of Game of Thrones came out on DVD, but Simon and I have once again wolfed it down. I watch very little TV and this is a conscious decision because reading and writing take priority in my life.  However, Game of Thrones is precisely the kind of thing I love to read and I’m really enjoying the fact that the TV series is bloody and brutal.  If it was some soft-focus, highly-edited and prettied-up version it would have completely ruined it.  There’s a lot of blood, there’s a lot of muck and there’s a lot of stuff you don’t see on prime-time BBC1.

The other thing going on at the moment – and I make no bones about mentioning this, because it’s DOMINATING EVERYTHING – are the care needs of my Father-in-Law, who has Alzheimer’s.  Simon and I have barely talked about anything else since the start of the year and it’s a constant source of worry. It’s difficult because we’re not at the sharp end, we’re not party to all the information, we’re not actively progressing things and frustration very quickly sets in when you feel that nothing is moving.

Still, it’s made us think very carefully about what we don’t want to land our daughter with when we’re in that position.  I think I shall be following the example of my parents in that regard. They’ve worked very sensibly over the last 10 years to make their house as maintenance-free as it’s possible to get.  We send children to school, we give new parents help with parenting, but really we should be putting in lessons on how to get ready for old age, so that you don’t wander into it without having considered where or how you’re going to spend it. This is beyond pensions, it’s about the practicalities of living and your choices in that.  Perhaps it seems harsh, but in my opinion, it’s better that you make informed choices when you’re able to and don’t leave it until you absolutely have to and end up with virtually no choice at all.

Anyway, rant over. I’d talk about happier things if there was anything much to report on.

Oh, I forgot, there is something good to report (well, to me there is, not that anyone outside my own head is interested :) ), but I have started writing my first original piece of work.  I’m four chapters in and it’s got the working title of Britannia Rising.  It’ll feature sex, snow and Scottish people, so not a million miles away from Game of Thrones  – although slightly more call for Gore-tex :)

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The Mountains of Millbrook

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Rachel

Thanks Nick its FridayHow on earth is it the 8th February already?  Is this year on fast forward or something? It really doesn’t feel like five minutes since we were celebrating New Year, and here we are, it’s nearly Christmas! By the way there’s only 319 days to go folks, so I hope you’ve got your sprouts on.  Sadly, you’ve already missed the last posting date for New Zealand.

So what’s been going on at Lewis Lodge? Well, during January there was an awful lot of stress. We always knew that DD’s Year 11 and GCSE year wouldn’t be fun, and we’ve been treated to an early dose of that, as she took a raft of component exams during the month.  It may actually be less stressful, come June, to revise and do the blasted things myself. DD is not a natural student, bless her.  If she can make it, choreograph it or design a PowerPoint presentation about it, she’s your girl. Learning stuff? Nuh uh!

Still, there have been amusing moments. Her serious comment about the hairography in her final Dance assessment had me almost struggling to breathe from laughing. The what? Apparently, this is to be given serious consideration and is way that your hair forms part of the dance.  Well maybe.  I’m just making that up. I haven’t a clue what it is, but for DD it’s an issue.  I’m sure there’s an entire cohort of girls who grew up in the 1980s and will now be beating a path to Michael Gove’s door to get a retrospective O Level in Hairography – (Sponsored by Harmony Hairspray).  Can’t help thinking though, that you’re a little bit stuffed if your hair’s doing a Servalan.

ServalanOK, my friends now fall into two categories; ones that are going ‘who the heck’s that?’ and the others who are even now tweeting their ‘Re-Make Blake’s 7′ demands to the BBC.  Oh come on, if we can re-boot Doctor Who and drag Red Dwarf out of the cupboard we can re-boot Terry Nation’s other creation (he also gave us the Daleks). Blake’s 7 was FABULOUS!  Oh pish to the wobbly sets, it was the BBC.  We won a war on wobbly sets!  Sci-fi is all about being creative and the BBC were as creative as they could be for £3.50 and bottle of PVA glue.

Elsewhere in the fair county of Middle Narnia, they are cracking on with the construction of the new Center Parcs resort at what they’ll officially be calling Woburn Forest, although the rest of us call it ‘I can’t believe it’s not Millbrook.’  Speaking of Millbrook, I’m surprised the place isn’t crawling with Geologists, because have you seen the big old orogensis* going on over there?  With the amount of earth moving that’s going on, they are close to creating the highest point in the county and giving us the Millbrook Alps in the process.  Anyway, it’s on course to open sometime in 2014, assuming that Middle Narnia doesn’t solifluct into the 17,000m² excavation for the lake in the process. I’m assuming that’s where all the soil’s coming from?

This last weekend we were up in the Principality of Cakelandia seeing our friends the Craven family. It’s always a wrench to come away, they’re such lovely people.  But this time Simon came away feeling slightly green around the gills after he’d been given a tour of Mark’s workshop at the top of the garden.  We’re talking serious stuff here and I could almost feel the tumble drier whizzing past my ear as it’s moved to make space for another-one-of-those-pieces-of-kit-Mark’s-got.  Hmm… I’m thinking that if the BBC need some less-wobbly sets for the Blake’s 7 re-boot (funded by cancelling anything associated with cash, attics, antiques or property), I know a man with a workshop who just found himself a willing assistant.

Woohoo!  I shall get DD cracking on some Servalan hairography…

Have a happy Friday and a great weekend!

*An orogensis, an orogeny, or an orogenic zone is a mountain building phase or an area where mountain building is active – such as the Alps.  It’s not to be confused with an orogenous zone, which is something Geology undergraduates frequently end up writing in their final exams by accident.

Posted in Comment, Daily Life | 2 Comments

Here’s one I made earlier

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Rachel

toocutechildof70sNow that our kids have access to more TV channels than they can count 24 hours a day, the currency of children’s programmes has devalued somewhat.  You can’t even guarantee that your friends even have the same viewing platform as you (Sky / Freeview / Freesat / BTVision / etc), let alone them actually watching the same show.  But in the… I was going to say good old days of the 1970s there, but post Savile and whatnot you have to be careful what you say about the past.  We’re rapidly discovering that it wasn’t as golden as we thought it was.

That aside, one thing that you could pretty much bank on, was that we all watched the same children’s TV programmes. For the simple reason that there wasn’t much choice. Between 3.30pm and 5.30pm on a weekday afternoon you had a choice of BBC1 or ITV and that was it.  There was none of this Cartoon Network rubbish.  No Disney Channel, no MTV, no satellite TV.  All we had in the 1970s was three terrestrial TV channels and you know what? We lived to tell the tale.

I didn’t watch ITV, I was a BBC girl, and I still am.  So if you want to talk Tiswas then I’m going to look at you blankly.  But mention Playschool, Jackanory, Newsround, Swap Shop, Blue Peter and the like and I’m your girl!

Blue Peter is an institution in itself. It was and still is, a magazine programme which combined all sorts of mad stuff (hang-gliding off Big Ben or something) with a penchant for being able to make cool stuff out of washing up liquid bottles, toilet roll tubes and sticky back plastic.

Where is sticky back plastic now I ask you?  Does anyone ever see it these days?  When I was little, we used to go into Duffy’s the Hardware shop in our village and there was an entire rack of the stuff.  I grew up confident that should the need arise and I actually wanted to make something from Blue Peter; I could lay my hands on all the sticky back plastic I needed in fifteen different colours!  The toilet roll middles were also fairly easy to come by, especially if we blamed it on Tibby the cat. But sadly, my supply of washing up liquid bottles was less certain, and entirely dependent on me and my sister being able to generate enough washing-up to keep my Mum at the sink until Christmas.  We staged a valiant effort, but there were never quite enough of them to make the Great Wall of China.

Kids these days don’t want to make a cheap version of something with crap they found around the house, they want to buy the real thing, in a nice glossy box from Argos. So it’s sad that a piece of resourcefulness is being lost from our collective DNA.

Or so I thought…

I think it’s alive and well and doing way cooler stuff than making castles out of bog roll.  It’s doing experiments! I spotted this on the BBC website earlier… “Professor Brian Cox conducts an experiment to isolate his DNA using just a test tube, his own saliva, washing up liquid, salt and vodka.”

Ha haaa!  Look at that!  The spirit of Blue Peter is alive and well and doing theoretical quantum nuclear astro-physics, or whatever the heck he’s Professor of at Manchester. Blue Peter is all grown up and can tell us how to isolate our own flipping DNA!  Next week we’ll be doing nuclear fusion with two Pyrex dishes and an ice block.

Sadly, this isn’t actually what Blue Peter is doing.  I have no idea what Blue Peter is doing these days.  I imagine the presenters are jumping about in increasing desperation just to attract even one random passing child to perform to, now that we have hundreds of TV channels, the Internet and every games console in existence. But I am confident, that were we still in the realm of three TV channels, kids would be sat there happily isolating their own DNA along with Professor Cox.

…Or would they?

Possibly not for one very odd reason. Just like the 1970s, there’s a scarcity of washing up liquid.  Not because Mum can’t keep up with the number of bottles you need (this was the 1970s after all, men went to work and women did housework); but because we bung it all in the dishwasher with a tablet of Finish these days. Washing-up liquid is a commodity in increasingly short supply!  Oh no!  We need to slap a preservation order on it, just so that kids of the future will be able to have the opportunity to isolate their own DNA (obviously we’ll never run out of vodka); it’s important! It’s their education!  Of course, I appreciate that if things go the way it looks like they’re going, all kids will be YouTube zombies in five years. However, I believe it’s vital that we take the necessary steps to safeguard their right to washing-up liquid, if by some chance they look up from their screens for long enough and suddenly feel the urge to isolate their own DNA.

Obviously, for some things their time has come, much like sticky back plastic (what did anyone actually use it for anyway, was it just made for Blue Peter?).  But if you can really do cool stuff with vodka, salt, washing-up liquid and a gob of spit, isn’t that worth preserving?

And what happens if you keep the salt, substitute the vodka for tequila, add a lemon and miss out the washing-up liquid and spit?

Ah, well; that my girl is the spirit of Why Don’t You… ;)

Posted in Comment, Entertainment, Science | 5 Comments

Pressing On

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Rachel

growupI’ve wanted to use this avatar for years and I think today’s the perfect day for it.  Yes, it contains a word I would not usually want to use, but just swap that for another one more to your liking if you are offended.  If you are a Christian and offended by the use of the word evolution, I ask you to do some more reading around the subject and discover hermeneutics.

Offended, it’s the ‘in thing’ right now.  How offended we get by what people say.  I don’t intend to give offence, that isn’t my mission in life.  I shall leave that to those more experienced or willing to engage with that sphere.

This avatar is both a note to me and a warning shot across the bow of humanity. It’s a note to me because I have had the most challenging week, in which a perfect storm of difficulties have conspired to leave me inert and reeling from the punches. During this time, I have considered the option that it just might be a whole lot easier if I stopped writing and retired hurt from ‘the Internet,’ knowing that that course of action would lance two problem areas in my life.  At the end of every day this week that has been my decision, to close everything down and walk away.  Go back to not writing, when life was easier.  Or at least it felt easier. It’s also a warning shot across the bow of humanity, because I think we forget ourselves sometimes and drag ourselves down to an evolutionary level far below where we’re supposed to be.  We’ve got this far, surely you want to go on and become better, more evolved humans? Surely you don’t want to end up being unable to solve a petty squabble without using half a rainforest of newsprint?

Give in, give up.  That’s how I’ve felt at the end of every day this week. But every morning  I have woken up thinking differently.  No, I won’t give in  and I won’t quit because I am not the woman I was, I am this woman.  I am stronger, I am more able to deal with things. It’s just that some patterns of behaviour are well-worn ruts into which it’s so easy to fall.  But at some point, my head kicks in and realises that it knows another way to be and I step off the well-worn track onto the new thing I do.

So what is the point of walking away, to be yet another person who took one look at the tough times and said ‘no, that’s not for me.’  We wouldn’t have developed as a species if hadn’t been able to contend with a few difficulties along the way.  We’d have been no sort of a nation if Winston Churchill had made plans to surrender instead of ordering his Armed Forces to fight like stink.

So like the proverbial thorn in your side I refuse to go away.  I shall carry on, knowing that somehow, somewhere, all this will make sense even though I can’t precisely see it right now.  I choose to respond to life’s difficulties, not react to them.  That’s pretty much me putting a time delay on my life.  Nothing comes out unless it’s passed through the filter of thinking about it, I will not go straight to open gob and vent.   That is not the way we do things anymore, we are grown-ups, we are fully evolved humans.  And fully evolved humans can still write and contribute to life even though some of the plates they’re spinning have just crashed to the floor.

So then, pressing on…

“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down (but we get up again) [no, it doesn't say that but wouldn't it be good if it did], but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. 2 Corinthians 4: 8-10.

Posted in Comment, Daily Life, Writing | 1 Comment

Being Nice: The New Social Freakery

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Rachel

lightwhite computerIt’s official, it’s uncool to be nice. If you want to get anywhere as a columnist or a respected blogger these days then you need to be very good at being horrible.  Liz Jones of the Daily Mail (quel surprise) seems to be making a particularly good living from it. Others too, seem to delight in eviscerating people in words for public entertainment.

I’m sure when Sir Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the World Wide Web back in the day, that his over-arching aim was to provide a place where we could hurl abuse at anyone who dared to express a view contrary to our own.  And not very creative abuse at that.  Vocabulary use has declined.  There are no shades of emotion anymore. Anyone who gets it wrong is ‘slammed’ or ‘blasted.’  As for people’s reactions, there is awesome, there is outrage and there is nothing in between.

Sometimes, reading through the comments on an article is like wading through the contents of a sewer. How can people say these things about other people? I think.  But I know.  Until recently, the Internet was seen as a playground; where, safely hidden behind your anonymous user name with only your IP address giving your approximate location, you could say exactly what you pleased, pretty much with impunity.  At best, no one bothered commenting on what you said; at worst, you got a reputation for being a troll.  These days, well in Britain at any rate, you can be prosecuted for what you say on Twitter or on Facebook. Amazingly, the media think this is new, but we’ve always had these agreements about standards of conduct on fan-run messageboards, it’s just that there was no way of enforcing it other than through the ‘block’ button.  In the corporate-owned world of Twitter, it’s a different game and people are finally getting the message. But it doesn’t stop them. They still wade in with the most hideous comments.

I don’t want any part of that.  There’s a difference between the gentle puncturing of someone who’s become too full of their own self-importance and the outright questioning of their parentage.  If I have to stand alone in the blogosphere for niceness then I will do it.  It isn’t popular but I’m not going to allow myself to be pulled into an oubliette of venomous drivel just because it’s fashionable. Can I start the fashion for nice please, because I don’t like that it’s suddenly OK to be vile to other people.

If I convince no other person to take a stand for manners and common courtesy then I shall proudly stand on my own, striking a blow for niceness on the Internet. I’m sure Sir Tim Berners-Lee would approve.

Posted in Comment, Daily Life, Writing | 3 Comments

Novel Times…

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Rachel

toocute inmynovelSo, after spending ages writing close to half a million words of fan fiction, (all readable here), it’s time to do what I’ve been threatening to do for the past two years. That is, to write my own stuff.

When I started writing fan fiction I always viewed it as a training ground, to discover whether or not I could write a story that people would actually read. With 1500 people taking a look, and 377 of them reading all 5 stories that I’ve created so far, (stats for Dec 2012 alone),  I think that question has been answered – yes they will!  Whether they like what I write isn’t something I’ve entirely established.  So far all I’ve written is Twilight fan fiction. It’s what Fifty Shades of Grey started life as and few people like that.

But it’s time to put away the sparkly vampires and write something entirely from my own imagination. A scary thought indeed. I’m creating my own characters, my own plot and borrowing a few well-chosen locations. I’ll be using my own turns of phrase and description; and, also, my rather scatter-gun approach to punctuation.  I really must work on that as part of my learning process.  Yes, I have a story in mind and no, I’m not telling you what it’s about. However, my aim is that by this time next year it’ll be available to read as an e-book.   No, I’m not going down the route of a traditional publisher (just yet), because I don’t fancy spending the next few years hoiking it about only for it to never see the light of day. I’m new at this and I need some feedback.  If turn out to have written the suckiest thing to ever come out of Sucksville then I’d like to know about it promptly so I can do better next time.  Also, this is part of my ‘one step at a time’ plan.  I am not gifted with the chutzpah to announce myself as the next big thing, so I’ll be asking a selection of people to beta read it for me.  If you fancy using lots of red pen over a manuscript and giving me honest feedback, then let me know.  I don’t want anyone who’s going to want to spare my feelings, simply say ‘it’s good’ and leave it at that.  I want constructive criticism.  I’m a big girl now, I can cope with being told I need to do better.

This story is going to need some research doing for it and I’ve already made a start.  Some text books need to be read; some maps need to be consulted and, if I can wing it, some travel may be involved.  There’s no advance from a publisher, so I’ll leave the book about the beach holiday in the Seychelles for another time.

This is a story that’s been kicking about in my head for a long time and my friend Clive Anderson (no, not that one), once said that stories have to come out of your head to make way for other ones.  So this might not be the greatest story ever told (especially as Jesus was in that one), but perhaps once it’s out of my head other ones will fill it.  Stories that, I hope,  will be all the better because I’ll have learned so much from writing this first one.

Let me reassure you, that this time around nobody I know in real life will be used as the basis for a character.  But rest assured, that day will come – oh the storyfodder you all are! :D All these characters will be entirely fictional, so anybody worrying that I’m drawing my inspiration from them can be safely assured that I won’t be.  The locations will be real (with poetic licence), and the time it’s set in will be similar to today, but I need to make slight changes to the history of things in order for this to work.

I’m very excited about working on it and I apologise in advance if I fall into a writing hole or two.  I spent all of Christmas twirling the story around in my head and now that the new year is here, I can get to work firming up the plot-line and doing the research to bring my story to life.

In the process of writing my first 5 stories, I’ve worn the letters off the E, R, T, A, S, H, N and M keys on my keyboard.  So here’s to 12 months of wearing off a few more!

Onwards to The End!

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 5 Comments

Ex Libris 2012… Part 4

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Rachel

ReadingI’ve seen almost no TV this year. Now they’ve started messing around with the scheduling of Doctor Who (what precisely is wrong with running a series all the way through without a break?), I’m really not that engaged with the whole medium.  But books I can manage and make a priority of including in my day.  Let me assure you, that my (currently) 42 books read this year is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to some people’s totals. They are polishing off 75-100 books a year and more.  I am only a entry-level story junkie compared to them.

So, continuing on from part 3, this is what I’ve read during the latter part of the year:

The Rock – Robert Daws
Always difficult when you read something written by someone you know, especially when it’s not a genre that you would normally gravitate to. As I’ve said many times I’m not a person who reads a lot of crime fiction, but this is a good introduction to a likely series, giving you enough information about the characters but leaving sufficient in reserve to be able to develop them later on. The slight downside to reading about any male Detective (for me), is that I always expect them to be like Gene Hunt. Broderick was perhaps a little too like Hunt for me not to be imagining a bloke in a camel-hair coat. More about the book HERE

Under the Dome – Stephen King
2012 has been about reading a greater variety of books than I usually would and never before has anything with the label horror ever appeared on my reading list.   I read this for bookgroup and this was not what I was expecting.  I was anticipating spinning heads and exploding stomachs; what I got was an absolutely unputdownable tale (of nearly 900 pages), which documented the breakdown of a small American town when a mysterious and impenetrable dome suddenly appears over it.  My disquiet in reading it came from the Christians in the town – a more evil bunch you could not imagine – and the shocking way that society imploded in a very short space of time. I found this wholly believable, as I’m of the opinion that if we had to go through another state of war, where everything was rationed – such as Britain in WW2 – there would be rioting on the streets inside a week.  We are simply too selfish in the west to go without access to everything, all the time.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would be quite happy to read something else by Stephen King.  So I did.

Full Dark, No Stars – Stephen King
This is a series of shorter stories – not short, (two of them take up most of the book), which explores what makes people kill or do things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do.  The story ‘A Good Marriage’ was the one that unsettled me the most; both in the capacity of the very nice, well thought-of man turning out to be otherwise; and his wife’s reaction to that discovery. A Fair Extension I didn’t enjoy, as I struggled to cope with the concept of wishing ill-fortune on someone just because you’re envious of them.

That Loving Feeling / With Love at Christmas – Carole Matthews
Stephen King to Carole Matthews is quite a segue!  I read these two books sequentially because Carole’s new book With Love at Christmas, features the same Joyce family from her 2009 book That Loving Feeling.  You don’t need to do that to appreciate the second book, but it was a good to remind myself of the background hinted at in the first couple of chapters. One of the many things I adore about Carole’s books is that they are set outside London. Both these are set in Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, a place I know well (you must go to The Outdoor Shop there, it’s brilliant).  Both stories are centred around Juliet Joyce, who in That Loving Feeling finds herself back in contact with her ex-boyfriend and contemplating a life that’s a lot more glamorous than her current married-with-two-teenagers-who-treat-the-place-worse-than-an-hotel existence. How that pans out I’ll let you find out for yourself. But suffice to say, things in With Love at Christmas get a whole lot more complicated.  As Christmas books go,  this is a big tin of Quality Street with all the ones you like in.  As a bonus there are more roast potatoes than you can shake a stick at.

Light on Snow – Anita Shreve
This book has been sat on my shelf for several years.  With the onset of winter, my thoughts had found themselves dwelling on the season and what that brings with it.  A father and daughter out for a walk discover an abandoned newborn baby in  the wood close to their home.  What follows is an absolutely beautiful story of how grief affects people and their relationships with those around them.  This was a glass bauble of a book, exquisite and delicate; of which I have one very serious criticism.  It ended far too soon.

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Read for Bookgroup.  A really simple tale on the face of it (a butler sets off for a motoring holiday in the West Country), but at one point the tale expands outwards so suddenly that you feel like you can see the universe on the page.  I adored the use of language; the correctness and economy of meaning. We live in a time where everything is ‘hideous’ or ‘fabulous’ and there seems to be nothing in between.  It was nice to go back to a time when things were expressed in gentler, more specific way. Definitely a book to treasure, especially if you are a fan of Downton Abbey.

Comet in Moominland – Tove Jansson
Not perhaps something that you’d expect me to read, but it’s my aim to work my way through the Moomin series again.  The world appears to be sitting more correctly on its axis after I have taken a wander through Moominland. One of the many things I am thankful for these days, is that children’s literature is not derided.  We recognise that books and stories are important to both fire up and inform young minds.  The Moomin books need to play a vital role in every child’s development.  If there is no fantasy then there is no escape.  We all need an escape.

Water for Elephants -  Sara Gruen
water-for-elephantsWith this I stuck to my ‘don’t watch the film until you’ve read the book’ policy and I’m glad I did.  This is an absolutely amazing piece of storytelling which owes much to very detailed research.  If anyone has ever wanted to run off and join the circus, they would do well to read this tale of 23 year old Jacob Jankowski; who, in the wake of his parents’ death, leaves his finals at Cornell University and does just that.  What he encounters is not pretty, although Marlene is ( the equestrian director’s wife) and I’m sure you can guess what happens there.  The scenes of animal cruelty are shocking and I would like to believe that this sort of thing is behind us; but alas, the very day I finished the book, this article appeared on the BBC News website.

Christian Beliefs – Wayne Grudem
Probably up there with John Stott’s Basic Christanity as a good outline on the things that every Christian needs to know.  It’s a very abridged version of his 1300-page Systematic Theology.  Each chapter gives good solid information on each topic with enough explanation and expansion to inform without swamping your brain.  I would say that every Christian should have a copy.

The Devil Wears Prada – Lauren Weisberger
I bought the book a long time after I saw the film of the same name, so this breaks my rule of reading the book before watching the film. As soon as the story gets going you’re left in no doubt that significant changes were made to the film from the original book.  The kernel of the book is there, but virtually everything about it was changed for the film.  I found the character of Lily in the book particularly sad and it was a shock to discover how she was originally written.  However, you have to boggle in amazement at the character of Miranda Priestly.  Does she really set out to break every person who works for her?  Well done to Lauren Weisberger for writing an iconic fictional character. Sadly, and it pains me to say it, but on this occasion, I prefer the film.  This is why I always try and do it the other way around because it feels inherently wrong to be disappointed by a book.

Winter’s Tale – Mark Helprin
This book was so good that it gets its own blog post, HERE.  It is the best book I have ever read and knocks Tess of the D’Urbervilles off its perch after 20 years.

The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
I’m struggling to know what to write about this book, especially as the blurb from the publishers says “we don’t want to tell you what happens in this book.  It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.”  This is possibly because if you find out what the subject matter is, you’ll put it back on the shelf and choose something else.  We would exhibit in a bookshop precisely what we’d do in real life.  We would most likely ignore this subject and find something happier to watch on TV, something happier to read about; but these are people’s lives. If we don’t read stories like this then we may go through life thinking that our lives are worth more than the type of people in this story. That is blatantly not true.  So I say find a copy and read it.  Expose yourself to something not very good about the United Kingdom and perhaps it will make you think twice when an item about it comes on the news. Both hysterical and horrific in one fell swoop.

I’m currently reading…The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Onward into 2013 with my never diminishing ‘to read’ pile.

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Let me Ride on a Sleigh to the Lake of the Coheeries

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Rachel

ReadingI rarely make a post about an entire book, I usually do a quarterly round-up of what I’ve read; but it is a significant day in my life when I admit that Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy – a book I have loved since I read it over twenty years ago – has been replaced in my affections as the best book I have ever read.  I don’t make this post lightly; many books have been wonderful reads, but I would still put Tess above them all.  That is, until today; when a book I first bought in 1986 has claimed the prize of my literary heart.

Amazingly, I do remember buying it – perhaps a portent itself.  I bought it from a supermarket when I was out shopping with my parents. I was 16 years old and making the transition from reading the Twilight of the time (we read the incestuous works of Virginia Andrews), to reading ‘proper’ books.  This book was in the current crop of paperback bestsellers and I was drawn to it because of the cover art (hangs head in shame). Look, I was 16, I knew diddly squat about books (I still do); but that and the blurb on the back that hinted at something magical and wonderful inside, got the author a sale.

I took it home and read it.  Well, I read about the first 75 pages and my then 16 year old brain passed out from the effort. I sadly closed the book, gave up on it and put it on my shelf.  At some point in the years between 1986 and 2000 (there is irony in that year), it left my possession; because it did not move to Ampthill with me.

Earlier this year, whilst browsing Waterstones in Milton Keynes it was there; re-jacketed and on a table, highlighting the best of American fiction.  For some reason, I felt that that book and I had unfinished business. I had to have it and Waterstones seemed to agree, because it was part of the 3 for 2 offer.

About a week ago finally started to read it.  This time I got past page 75…  Actually, I was well past page 75 in a day; as 26 years of additional reading and life experience, meant that this time I didn’t struggle to get to grips with at least the first part of the story. And what a story!

Winter’s Tale

The book that has toppled Thomas Hardy is Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. My brain is literally singing after reading it.  It’s hard for me to actually say what it’s about, so I’m nabbing the next bit from the author’s website:

Though immensely complicated, the story is centered upon Peter Lake, a turn-of-the-century Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young heiress whom he encounters in robbing her house, and who eventually will die young and in his arms. His love for her, and a gift of grace, will allow him after the most extraordinary and painful explorations and discoveries to stop time and bring back the dead.

It was a feast of everything I love and colour, oh my goodness so much colour! Mark Helprin’s descriptions of winter, in both the city and the country, and especially his palette of winter, are passages that almost made me weep with joy.  His love of New York City is clear from every page and the deftness with how he brings together a tale spanning almost 100 years is jaw-dropping. It’s almost steampunkish – although that is totally and utterly the wrong and crassest word for it; but the juxtapostion of metal and metaphysics fired-up my brain, in a way no other book has done previously

I have never been to New York City and until today had never particularly wanted to go there.  But now I do!  I also want to go beyond there, to upstate New York and into the land that was the inspiration for the imagined Lake of the Coheeries, which I may have to twin with my own imagined ‘Middle Narnia.’

The story climaxes in the year 2000 and if I’d have read it in 1986 as I’d first intended, I would probably have had a different reaction to the description of it in those passages than I do now – reading it almost equidistant in the opposite direction – looking back at 2000 instead of looking forward at what might be to come.

I was through this book like a hot knife through butter and I’ve only skimmed the surface of it. I’m desperate to go back and read it at a more leisurely pace, savouring it and allowing it to sink deeper within me, now that my desire to know how it ends has been sated.

My delight in this book was only slightly tarnished by discovering that they’re currently making a film of it.  Not that I wouldn’t like to see it, but because I will be truly astounded if they can make a film that gets anywhere close to the glorious pictures in my head. As a common turn of phrase goes: ‘good luck with that.’ It will be needed. Filming Winter’s Tale could be as tough as film adaptation gets. If they pull it off they could be looking at an Oscar.

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Ex Libris 2012… Part 3

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Rachel

I last blogged about books back in June, so it’s high time I updated you about what I’ve been filling my grey matter with since then.  The first thing to note is that for the last three years I’ve been noting down what I read on A4 file paper; but having seen the Leuchtturm1917 Ex Libris journal in Ampthill’s Stationery and Gift Boutique (in pink no less), I just had to have it!  No, I did.  This is for recording books in and books are important. So a moment please.  Pray silence for the gorgeous pink journal for recording the details of 116 of the books you read in… mmmm.  It is a thing of beauty and I have copied out all the details of everything I’ve read since January 2010.  Sadly, I’ve not got enough recollection of a lot of books to jot down some notes about the early ones, but from now on I have a place to do so.  I’ve already filled 78 of the 116 recording pages, so that’s not too hideous a showing over the course of nearly three years.

So, back to June. I left you at the Fifty Shades trilogy.  You’ll be glad to know that things got slightly better, although not much, when I plunged headlong into the final book of the Fallen series by Lauren Kate.  This is teen fiction made slightly more redeemable by having a protagonist who decides to find out for herself what’s going on, seeing as nobody is up for telling her.  The final book in the series Rapture, delivers the climax and the neat little twist that’s the key to the whole thing. As a book in the series it was better than its predecessor, Passion, which I felt really suffered from Luce wandering about all over the place. But Rapture delivered me what I wanted, which was all the ends tied up and a glimpse into the future.  Unlike its vampire counterpart, I’ve had no desire to write fan fiction about angels; although anyone who’s read mine and this will not struggle to see where I got the inspiration from (my) Daniel from.

Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth is a rare departure for me into non-fiction.  While I’m completely signed up to Geneen Roth’s way of looking at the crazy relationships women have with food and their bodies, I always make the mistake of expecting to find the answer to my problem in ten easy steps, but that isn’t what this book is about.  Finding my own way and discovering what works for me isn’t something that comes naturally, but this is the essence of Geneen’s writing.  Geneen writes about the subject and it’s for you to arrive at your own point of self-realisation and decide for yourself how to proceed. This is definitely worth a read if you, like me, have a big old problem with your body and how you’re feeding it.

Next up was Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express (read for book group). This was my second attempt to read books by her and I’m afraid that Hercule Poirot left me with much the same feeling as the Nitwit Marple did.  I wanted to hack the pair of them to death with pickaxes.  I really didn’t care who’d murdered so and so – so memorable I can’t even remember his name – and it just fuelled my belief that I really don’t care for crime fiction.

Game of Thrones by George R R Martin.  This is more like it! Rufty tufty northerners go into battle against a bunch of soft, sappy southerners.  OK, a bunch of artful and conniving southerners.  Throw in a mystical element, a bit of selling your sister to a bloke in return for his help in getting your kingdom back, keep it going for the best part of 800 pages and I’m in my element.  To be honest I did see the DVD of the TV series first, so this hung together very easily and virtually read itself.  You need a bit of fantasy and escapism in your life and this ticks boxes that haven’t been ticked for an awful long time.  What’s even better is that there are a shed-load more books in the series. Hurrah for authors who write a series!

Now, being a writer of Fan Fiction (gratuitous link to own stuff), anyone writing the stuff piques my interest these days.  It is the reason I read E L James and it is the reason I was intrigued to read Death Comes to Pemberley by P D James. Well, what is this but fan fiction, if you define is as the genre of creating new stories using other people’s characters?  The fact that Jane Austen is not alive to sue P D James’ backside / collect mucho-royalty-spondulicks, is possibly the reason that this is a bonafide book and what I write is still Fan Fiction.  But did I like it? I didn’t like my first read of a P D James (Death in Holy Orders), but as she is messing with dearest Jane and I’m a fan of Austen and Pride and Prejudice, did James pull it off?  Dammit, I believe she did!  I do hope that Austen fans will forgive me, but any writing that causes outbreaks of Colin Firth in one’s head, is to be recommended. :D

Finally for this installment we get to a piece of crime fiction that I enjoyed.  The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (read for book group).  Where Poirot bored me, Holmes did not.  I like a man who can write an entire tale and make it hang on a few barely-noticed elements in the first couple of chapters.  I had no trouble reading this and it made me much more disposed to read more of Sherlock Holmes in the future.  And no, before you ask, I haven’t seen the current TV series version of it. “Oh but you must!”  Oh, but there are too many books and so little time…

Coming up next time…

The Rock – Robert Daws
Under the Dome – Stephen King
Full Dark, No Stars – Stephen King
The Loving Feeling / With Love at Christmas – Carole Matthews
Light on Snow – Anita Shreve
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Comet in Moominland – Tove Jansson
Water for Elephants -  Sara Gruen

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If we all take a massive step back

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Rachel

It’s been a busy week.  Let’s face it, every week feels like a busy week and days, weeks, months, years and even decades slip by at what feels close to light speed.  It was only a few short weeks ago that somebody reminded me that it was 25 years since Star Trek: The Next Generation was first aired on TV.  That was September 1987 and it feels like last week. Conversely, there are times when I get to Friday and the previous Monday feels like it’s at the other end of the Universe.  Time is an odd thing and while it may indeed move in a linear way (theories of certain Time Lords aside), our perception of it is very distorted. What also gets distorted is our view of the world.  We get wrapped up in our own little bit of it and I’m as guilty as the next person for not seeing beyond the end of my own nose at times.  So it’s always good to remind yourself what our world looks like.

Isn’t she a beauty?

When all of us take a huge step back from everything and I mean everything, that is the image that we all see. Regardless of what sex we are, what colour our skin is, which country we live in, what sexual orientation we are, whether we worship a God, many gods or no gods; each one of us, when we step back enough, will see that planet. Every single one of us calls it home.  Every single one of us depends on it for air, water and nourishment to keep us alive.  Every single one of us cannot exist anywhere else in the universe unless we replicate those same life-giving processes.

Getting a sense of how truly magical this planet is, is humbling. That too transcends the matter of how we think it got here.  Did it pop into existence in six days from a Creator God or evolve over many billions of years?  Is it truly worth arguing over?  No. Leave that aside just for one minute and marvel that however it happened it did and it’s never once charged us a penny in rent.

Stepping back gives us such great perspective and stepping back to this height means that the utter minutiae of our lives is rendered amazingly  unimportant.  Our petty squabbles and disagreements can’t be seen from this level and we understand how truly insignificant we are, because unlike the Great Wall of China, nobody can see us from space!

Up here it’s all serenity and it’s easy to feel magnanimous to your fellow humans when you don’t have to live cheek by jowl with them.  Up here humanity seems very wonderful and precious, but we rarely treat people as precious as we push them out of the way on a London tube train just so we can get home that little bit earlier.  Humanity doesn’t seem so precious when many thousands are dying each day from starvation whilst large swathes of it are dying from obesity.

Is it really truly and honestly worth killing or attacking another human being because they don’t believe the same thing as you do?  You share the same planet, the same air, the same water, the same genetic make up, is it really that important to kill them because they don’t share your thoughts?  Is it really worth investing time and energy persecuting someone because they have a different colour skin to you? Are they really such a threat to your survival if they love someone of the same gender?  Look at how beautiful that planet is, how utterly unique it is in our Universe – there isn’t another one! Can you honestly say that making life a misery for everyone else on planet earth is a good use of your time?

Get some perspective, take a step back. Don’t see yourself as unique, see the whole world as unique, because it is. This planet is the only one we have and regardless of any differences we’ve invented, we all share the basics of life from it.  All you see from up here is beauty and wonder and I wish more than anything that we could still see that beauty and wonder when we’re down on the surface.

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