A Man of Diverse Obsessions: the evidence in books.

My reading has been very inconsistent this year. I’ve been picking up new books before I’ve finished others so it’s been taking me a long time to finish each one.

My interests have been changeable and few books have really grabbed my interest. Only two or three have made me reluctant to put them down until they've been read.

That’s not to say the other books aren’t worth reading. Some have been interesting even though they lacked what it takes to keep my constant attention They just took longer to read than I intended.

Even now I look at my book cases (or the cupboards in the garage where most of my library is stored) and see things I’d like to start reading NOW. But I resist the temptation because I don’t need the congestion of more semi-read books around the house.

Because of my current reading situation, I haven’t written on this blog for a long time. I’ve wanted to write, but without the inspiration of a specific book I haven’t known what to say.

Then the other day I was thinking about the TYPES of books I own and saw they come under several different categories which may highlight the truth of my blog profile: “A man of diverse obsessions”.

What are these types?

Well, in no particular order, as they come to mind:

1) Autographed books

I’m not sure how many I own, but I have a good collection of books signed by their authors. Some I’ve obtained in person through attending book signings, or through knowing the author. Others I’ve bought ready signed after a shop has held a book signing. I have also written to authors requesting their signature on a book plate which has later been stuck in the front of a book. The latter approach has also given me a small collection of letters from authors – often handwritten.
Sadly, not all authors have replied to my request, not even using the self addressed, stamped envelope to return the blank bookplates (which aren’t easy to get).

2) History books.

Most of my history books seem to be royal biographies, mostly concentrating on the Tudor era. For some reason I’m fascinated by the period between the Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War which takes history from the origins of the Tudors through to the downfall of the Stuarts.

3) Gardening Books.

There are several “How to” books, but my preference is for those detailing other gardener’s experiences in creating a garden. The downside of those books is the gulf between their resources and mine. I don’t have several acres and I don’t have a limitless bank account.

4) Food books

While Gloria has a large collection of cook books, my interest leans more towards food production, food quality and diet. However it is more the social side of these topics that interest me, not scientific detail. What kinds of things influence our diet and how are we influenced by our diet. Why do we eat what we eat? Why do we eat how we eat? What effect do these things have on society?

5) Christian Books

This is perhaps one of the more frustrating categories in my collection and covers the kind of books that mostly disappoint and frustrate me. So often the term “Christian” is totally inappropriate. Whether non-fiction or fiction, so many have little in common with biblical Christianity.

6) Books about Israel/Jewish history.

This category includes many holocaust diaries, histories of the Jewish return to Israel and books about Messianic Judaism. Despite two thousand years of denial by the church, Israel and the Jewish people retain an important place in God’s plan for mankind. It is mainly during the last couple of years that I’ve begun to see that importance.

7) Space Race

How could I not be interested in the space race? I grew up during its exciting early years when men travelled into earth orbit and then to the moon, basically “sitting in a tin can” (as I think David Bowie described it).
My collection includes autobiographies (one autographed by a genuine moonwalker), a book of art prints and several histories. Most of them concentrate on the Apollo moon missions and their predecessors. My interest in space travel was so strong that I would have jumped on a space shuttle the day after the Challenger disaster if given the opportunity.

8) Fiction

Such a varied category, but the most represented authors in my collection are Tim Winton, Nick Hornby, Jasper Fforde, Mike Gayle.
Jasper Fforde is a recent discovery and I write about him elsewhere on this blog.
Mike Gayle is a recent REdiscovery and he also appears in a few posts somewhere around here. All of these except for Gayle are represented in my autographed book section. I’ll have to do something about adding him to my autographed books too. I corresponded with him through email last year so hopefully getting a signature won’t be too hard.
Jasper Fforde sells autographed copies of his books through his website (see link in side bar).

9) Fortean Books

The title of this section may have some people asking “WHAT?”
These books deal with mysteries and the unknown, the unusual and strange. The name relates to Charles Fort, a writer and researcher who took an interest in the strange stories sometimes appearing in newspapers.
Along with the Christian section, this one provides some of the most frustrating titles in my collection. I have come across few reliable and readable books dealing with these “Fortean” topics. Most are highly questionable accounts based on dodgy evidence written in a manipulative style. Many of these books had me sucked in for years, until my gullibility was slowly eroded away by a few excellent books by Jim Schnabel, David Clarke and Andy Roberts, and most recently Steve Dewey and John Ries.

And at that point I’ll bring this entry to a close without saying too much about my books on birds and birdwatching, or those about wine, or the children’s titles, books about Derbyshire (where I spent my childhood), or well represented, individual categories of fiction such as Victorian classic, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Irish literature…

So Many Books...

I have been overwhelmed with potential reading material after going overboard buying books. I addition to my excess purchases I have received a copy of The Alternative Kitchen Garden an A-Z to review. As the title indicates this is a gardening book, and it was written by Emma Cooper, presenter of the internet podcast The Alternative Kitchen Garden. This is a wonderful book that I’ll write about in more detail on my gardening blog when I’ve read more of it (my article will be linked here after it has been written).
It’s not the kind of book I want to rush through. I prefer to read and enjoy an article at a time and there must be around 150 separate entries of around two pages each.

To get a good idea of what the book is like, I recommend listening to the podcast which can be found here: http://coopette.com/akg . There are currently 109 episodes.

A recent discovery I've made has been Jasper Fforde and I am now enjoying the first of his novels The Eyre Affair. I’ve had another of his books for a few years but never took the time to read it, but my interest in his work was stirred after hearing some interviews he’s done. I then had a look at his website (see side bar) and decided to buy the first of his books so I could read his work in order. While I could have bought it locally for a few dollars less, I decided to buy through the author’s website and get an autographed copy.

Not only do I have an abundance of new books, I was finally able to rescue my existing library from packing boxes where it has been stored for many years due to lack of space for book shelving. The boxes made access very difficult and I even forgot that I had some of the books in my collection. While the bookcase situation hasn’t improved, I now have a compromise solution. I bought two cupboards that are like bookcases with doors. All of my books have now been relocated to these cupboards in the garage and it is much easier to access them, so I have no excuse for not reading them – apart from lack of time.

Reviewing My Reason for Reviewing

The review I wrote of Mary Poppins left me wondering whether I’d forgotten my reason for starting this blog.

I’m not sure I wrote anything of interest or value in that review. I could at least have written about my reason for reading that particular book at that particular time: which was for convenience. The book had been sitting unread on my bookshelf for ages and I wanted something reasonably quick and easy to read after taking over a month to get through the second of two books about the space race of the 1960s.

So why did I think I had to attempt a review? Do I really need to review every book I read or should I reserve that task for those books that I WANT to write about? Those books that move me in some way and give me an experience that I feel is worth documenting…

Reflection on the present

This blog was started to give me a springboard which will hopefully reinvigorate my interest in literature as both a reader and a writer. I started my "Fictional Autobiography" to see if recalling the past might help me rediscover the joyful aspect of reading that has been lost. In following this process I am wondering what most specifically led to the loss of enjoyment I used to get from a book.

At one time I enjoyed popular fiction and I’ve tended to blame my University studies for spoiling my enjoyment of some of those books. Exposure to more literary works has made me more critical and discerning about the kind of books that I want to spend time with. But then, so many of the literary works don’t spark that desire to keep reading page after page, chapter after chapter. If a book is going to maintain my interest for a few hundred pages, it needs much more than clever sentence structure and poetic imagery. While I can relish a well constructed paragraph with exquisite and vivid language, that paragraph has to lead me on to the next paragraph and the one after that. Unfortunately, the craftsmanship of the author can get in the way and I find myself stuck in place, admiring the beauty of that individual part forgetting that there is supposed to be a greater story to which that individual part is leading.

Initial evidence seems to indicate that I’ve lost my love for books, that I have changed and no longer have that strong desire to spend time in someone else’s stories. My inability to persevere with a book is therefore due to something different within me. Throughout life we all find that our tastes and interests change – and maybe that is what has happened, and it’s not a matter of trying to rediscover or renew a past love, but perhaps its time to move on; recognise the truth and start to pursue other interests that do maintain my attention.

But if that is the case, why am I continually drawn to books? Why do I spend so much time in bookshops? Why am I so interested in what others are reading? When I visit the home of a new friend, why do I head for their bookshelves to see what kind of books they put on display (I should not assume they read them)? Why do I keep buying books that through experience I know will probably remain unread? Why do I still hope to find that book which will take me by surprise and be one that I don’t want to put down?
I don’t want my reading experience to be an act of endurance, with the main pleasure being a sense of achievement attained by the fact that I actually finished the book. I want one of those books that I don’t want to finish, where reaching the last page leaves me wanting more.

My Fictional Autobiography (part 3): The Alien Years.

I recall writing to Arthur Shuttlewood in the 1980s. He was a one time journalist who became a kind of UFO guru. He had written several books about his home town’s relationship with UFOs, starting with The Warminster Mystery. Over many years Shuttlewood claimed that Warminster in southern England was an important hot spot for UFO activity.
I had been fascinated by UFO stories since the mid 1960s when England became the focus of a UFO “flap”. As an 8 or 9 year old during the time of the space race, the idea of alien visitation inspired a lot of excitement. I read many books from that time onwards including a few of Shuttlewood’s. Since I came across this topic at such an early age I can’t blame myself for maintaining a degree of gullibility for many years after. I lapped up the wildest claims with barely a degree of scepticism and a lot of my reading leaned towards things unexplained.

There was a strange tension in my life from trying to live with contradictory beliefs. In the late 70s I became a Christian, and yet I still tried to hold onto the interest in visiting aliens. To some extent I was able to do this by redefining the UFO phenomenon, moving from aliens visiting earth to an understanding that the whole thing was a demonic delusion. This view was not merely an idea permeating fundamentalist circles; some of the most popular and respected UFO writers were saying the same thing. The most well known that come to mind were John Keel (Operation Trojan Horse) and Jacques Vallee (Passport to Magonia). While these writers did not necessarily hold to the Christian interpretation of “demonic”, they raised the possibility that entities that had once been viewed as “demons” in some cultures were now being interpreted in terms applicable to the space age. Vallee saw the possibility that they were “Inter-dimensional” rather than Extra-terrestrial.

The 1980s was a boom-time for UFO books, aided by some highly questionable TV specials claiming Government collusion with extra terrestrials. I recall one that featured interviews with alleged CIA agents who described interaction with a captive alien (or “gray” as they came to be known). One of the major revelations provided was the flavour of ice-cream the entity preferred.

Books that were part of this trend included Above Top Secret by Tim Good and Communion by horror writer Whitley Strieber. The latter describing Strieber’s claimed abduction by “the visitors” was followed by several sequels such as Transformation and Breakthrough: the next Step. Strieber was another UFO writer who noted the similarities between his “visitors” and the demons of various religious traditions but his later books became more and more esoteric in content, making him seem more like a mystical guru than a serious contributor to UFO literature.

It was in the 90s that I woke up to my gullibility thanks to books by Jim Schnabel. Round in Circles examined the crop circle craze and Dark White looked at alien abductions. Rather than follow the tried and (not so) true path of examining countless witness reports, Schnabel turned the spotlight on the investigators who were presenting their own interpretation of the reports to the public. In my view he well and truly blew these phenomena apart, showing how much the investigators projected THEIR desires and expectations onto the evidence they claimed to have.

While the books and authors mentioned above would be classified as non-fiction, the borders between fact and fiction were clearly blurred by a lot of wishful thinking (both on the writer’s part and more significantly mine).

Hollywood returned to the UFO/Alien visitor arena starting with Spielberg’s Close Encounter’s of the Third Kind (in the 1970s) and later with his more popular ET.
Joe Dante’s Explorers starred very young River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke, while Cocoon directed by Ron Howard made an Oscar winner out of one of its aging stars (Don Ameche).

Starman one of John Carpenter’s less gruesome films was (like ET) part of the “alien as benign but threatened visitor” genre that contrasted significantly with the hostile aliens portrayed in many 50s SF films, when Hollywood had previously exploited an interest in things alien.

Some of the most popular films were converted into “novelisations”, of which I only recall reading Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I also owned the book version of Explorers but I don’t remember reading it.

Away from Hollywood’s exploitative inspiration, John Wyndham’s novels were favourites for a while, some of which had tenuous links to UFOs and/or alien visitors. The most significant being The Midwich Cuckoos, a story about a village that was temporarily cut off from the world by a mysterious force field (an idea that Stephen King has also used in his recent novel Under the Dome). In Wyndham’s book the temporary isolation is lifted and the entire female population of childbearing age are found to be pregnant. The story has been twice filmed under the name Village of the Damned. (Did I say I had moved away from Hollywood’s exploitation of the genre? Clearly that is not possible!)

One of the earlier and most well-known novels about alien visitors cannot be ignored. War of the Worlds has inspired films, radio plays and a musical extravaganza, and it was the latter that most closely followed H G Wells book. I read Wells’ novel many years ago and it’s one that I intend to read again when time and discipline permit. It is one of those science fiction stories that has taken on iconic status. A popular SF writer also wrote a sequel. Christopher Priest’s The Space Machine takes elements of War of the Worlds and another Wells novel The Time Machine and creates a story from a mix of the two ideas.

Perhaps the most cerebral book dealing with UFOs that I’ve read was Ian Watson’s Miracle Visitors, which dealt with the psychological nature of UFO encounters and gave a very ambiguous view of them. The cerebral approach to alien intelligence was also taken in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey created with Arthur C Clarke. I later read Clarke’s novel to see whether it would help me make sense of the film (which it did). In this story an alien presence has been alongside mankind from the very beginning of man’s development, following his progress and leaving clues of their existence that mankind will find at various stages of his technological journey.

Clarke was one of the most well known and admired science fiction writers and created various differing scenarios in which mankind came into contact with alien civilisations. Apart from 2001, the most memorable to me were Childhood’s End – which from memory gave an interesting spin to the alien as demon concept; and Rendezvous With Rama, a story dealing with the exploration and examination of a massive alien craft passing through our solar system. Rama was followed by a series of sequels.

I have only touched the surface of the ways in which human-alien contact has been explored in both fiction and “non fiction”, and all of it refers to aliens visiting US. There is probably far more about man visiting alien worlds stretching from early stories of men visiting the moon, through to Star Trek TV shows and movies and their various spin offs and imitations. The possibilities for stories about alien contact of various types are potentially limitless.

And here, on that cliched note, ends the latest part of my "fictional autobiography".

My Fictional Autobiography (part 2): Mostly Fantasy

My later teens are nothing to be proud about. I refused to read the required novels for my English classes in High School (but passed my final exams anyway). And I read many books of questionable taste such as Stanley Morgan’s “Russ Tobin” series, commencing with The Sewing Machine Man (gratuitous sex), and Richard Allen’s “Skinhead” series (gratuitous violence).
Those books are best forgotten.

I also had my first real taste of horror fiction with William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. It was the first time that a book genuinely scared me – something that the film failed to do, even though the book’s literary qualities are questionable and the film is considered a classic of the genre.

Some of the brighter spots in my reading diet came through my interest in fantasy and I rediscovered books by CS Lewis and Alan Garner. I had some memories of reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe years before, but I’d never moved on to the sequels. I’m not sure when I first came across Garner but his fiction seemed more grounded in “reality”. Lewis and Garner both portrayed a crossing over between real and magical worlds. Lewis took his child protagonists from their familiar circumstances and placed them in a world very different from their own, but Garner turned this around and showed the world of magic and myth crossing over to our world, bringing conflict here instead of isolating it in the relative safety of somewhere else. Garner also had less “jolly good show” about him than Lewis, portraying characters more familiar to me than those created by Lewis.

Obviously any serious follower of fantasy fiction can not avoid Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, but I have clearly not followed seriously enough because I've been unable to complete this revered trilogy. I’ve made multiple attempts, but have never made it to the end. It may seem irrelevant to others, but one hindrance to my progress has been chapter length. In my earlier attempts I found the chapters far too long to be tempted to read “just one more chapter” before I put the book down for the night. It’s amazing how much reading progress can be made through the “one more chapter” approach. When I read The Wizard of Oz as a child, I read the whole book in one sitting because I wanted to keep reading “one more chapter” before I was ready to put it down.

I recall very little fantasy fiction available for adults in the 1970s. That may be difficult to believe for anyone used to today’s abundance of fantasy titles. Almost everything I remember was written for children or ‘Young Adults”. The exceptions were Lord of the Rings and a couple of books inspired by it, like Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara. Some see Brooks as being the one who inspired the rise of Fantasy fiction as a viable adult genre, being the first to break through the fear of competing with Tolkien. (see http://www.terrybrooks.net/novels/sword.html)

For some reason those first attempts to aim fantasy at the adult reader didn’t appeal to me and my own reading of fantasy remained with the books written for children and teens. To Lewis and Garner I would add Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising) and Lloyd Alexander (The Prydain Chronicles) as my favoured authors of that time. I even named my Collie, Bran, after a dog in one of Cooper’s books.
I know there were other books and other authors, but they haven’t stuck in my mind to the extent of those already named; and I’m sure that those I DO recall (Penelope Lively, George MacDonald, E Nesbit,) belong to a later part of my life in books.

The Other Half Lives: Sophie Hannah

Sophie Hannah’s The Other Half Lives was so intriguing that not only did I read it at every opportunity I had, but I wanted to share the story with my wife who rarely spends time reading books. After each section I would put the book aside and bring her up to date with the story.

I first heard about the book from a very complimentary review in a Sunday newspaper. Very rarely am I tempted to buy a novel on the strength of a stranger’s recommendation, but this was one of the rare exceptions and without that review I probably would not have given the book any consideration, and if I’d known it would turn out to be a “crime novel” I would have been less likely to have taken an interest in it.

Considering my dislike of “crime fiction”, how did a book like this overcome my prejudice? Firstly its beginning didn’t fit with my idea of that genre and it was quite a way into the book before police investigators started to take a primary role.

It begins with Ruth Bussey being confronted with her new partner’s dark secret: that he, Aiden Seed, had killed a woman. Ruth’s initial shock resulting from this confession is compounded when she hears the name of the victim, Mary Trelease – a woman that Ruth knows is very much alive.

Ruth’s new relationship suffers from the turmoil created by the confession, and her attempts to discover the truth, and to convince Aiden that he did not kill Mary. Through this process we learn about Ruth’s own traumatic past which will re-emerge and affect her current situation.

The police become involved when Ruth tries to get them to investigate the murder she knows could not have taken place, hoping that where she had failed, the police may be able to convince Aiden of the truth.

This book has been described as a “psychological thriller” rather than crime fiction, and perhaps that label is more appropriate. Many of the characters have been damaged in some way by previous experiences, and those experiences are the catalyst that draws them all together within the unfolding conflict.

Towards the end of the book I lost a bit of momentum when I had to put it aside for a while. When I finally picked it up again I found it hard to get back into it. This was possibly because I was unable to devote a serious slab of reading time to one of the most crucial parts of the book; I could only read small portions at a time and I had trouble picking up the flow of the resolution.

I’m quite sure that Hannah managed to resolve all of the questions and quandaries she created, but my disjointed reading pattern at an important part of the story made it hard for me to appreciate the closure she brought to it.
If only I could go back and read it for the first time again, without the unfortunate break that disrupted my concentration at such a crucial time!

[I recently listened to an interview with Hannah, which can be found by clicking on the book title in the “Books Read” section the side bar. She reveals that a TV series based on her books is being planned.]

Black Swan Green: David Mitchell

I found a hardcover edition of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green in Wagga Wagga K-Mart selling for $7.00. I had never heard of the author or the book, but the blurb and the bargain price gave enough incentive for me to buy it.

It was after I’d finished the book that I found out that Mitchell had been twice shortlisted for the Mann Booker prize, and that this particular book had made the long list. That discovery made me wonder whether I should have liked the book more than I did.

The book wasn’t a disappointment. I DID enjoy reading it and it WAS the first book for a long time to keep my interest from beginning to end. Unlike many other books it didn’t get put aside for a lengthy period prior to finishing. But I’m not sure it was worthy of consideration for what is supposed to be one of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes.

Apart from the bargain price, what attracted me to THIS book instead of one of the others in the bargain bin? Mainly because it was about a young teenage boy growing up in the English Midlands and until I turned thirteen, I had also been a Midlands boy. Mitchell’s story about 13 year old Jason Taylor to a degree continued where my experience of English village life ended with my family’s move to Australia. Despite the 10 year gap between Jason’s time and my own there remained enough familiarity to recognise a lot of his story and environment.

The book looks at 13 months of Jason’s life at the beginning of puberty. We are not given a continuous narrative, but each chapter is like a short story of Jason's month by month experiences. Not all of these experiences are given full and immediate closure, but their outcome is revealed in hints throughout subsequent chapters. This approach is something I find appealing and has a slight similarity to Tim Winton’s technique in The Turning, where Winton used distinctly separate short stories to bring together an overall narrative linked by common characters. Mitchell’s book however maintains a more significant focus on the one person’s experience.

Jason faces all of the usual teenage anxieties of relating with family and being accepted by peers. The book shows how fluid and changeable concerns about those relationships can be and how successful manoeuvring through those changes is often dependant upon the image someone is able to create and maintain. Jason, having a persistent stammer has an obvious disadvantage regarding his perceived place among his peers.

Reviews of Mitchell’s books mention his uses of unconventional writing styles. Black Swan Green seems like it must be more conventional than his previous works, but it still has the interesting handling of narrative continuity mentioned above. While I wasn’t completely won over by this book I’m grateful for the introduction it gave me to David Mitchell and I look forward to trying his other novels.

For more information see: blackswangreen

My Fictional Autobiography (part 1): Childhood

In my early blogging days I wrote about the progression of my musical tastes through the different stages of my life. I have been thinking of doing the same with my literary tastes, but for some reason it doesn’t seem so easy.

One of the surprising things about considering the music in my life was how complete I was able to make the list. Of course I didn’t refer to every group, artist or recording that I liked over the years, but I was able to recall all of those who had an important influence on my tastes.

(See: Changing Tastes)

Applying the same approach to my relationship with books is much a more complicated process, but I’ll do what I can.

My mum taught me to read long before I started school. I have vague memories of two “Ladybird’ books, one about the alphabet and the other about farm animals, which must have played a part in my introduction to reading.

At school I remember “Janet and John” books that were used as a basic introduction to reading in class. Among the books available later were the “Thomas the Tank Engine” series and “Topsy & Tim” books.

A significant part of my reading journey began with a nose bleed that started on the way to school one day. I spent some time out of class with huge wads of cotton wool to soak up the blood. Eventually the school staff decided it would be better if I bled to death at home rather than on school premises and they contacted my mum who took me home.
I was very upset about missing class that day because I would miss the story broadcast via radio each week. As compensation my mum arranged my membership at the local library and selected a few books for me to read.

Apart from those few details I have no memory of specific books in those early years, but as my time in Primary school progressed I was a keen reader of the Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series. I also enjoyed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books prior to the TV adaptations and Doctor Dolittle was a friend long before Rex Harrison played him in the original film.

Part of the problem in recalling the books of my early life is the fact that there were so many of them and their significance to this project is merely due to the fact that I can remember their titles or parts of their plot.
Dodie Smith’s “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” is memorable partly because of the animated Disney film and also because my family had a Dalmatian for a pet. And there are similar Disney links for “Emil and the Detectives” and “The Incredible Journey”.

In my final Primary years the class library had a series of novels about wildlife. Each book focused on a different animal, creating a storyline out of its natural day to day experiences. I don’t remember any details of author or title but I loved them at the time. Those stories inspired me to write my own contribution to the genre and I spent hours filling an exercise book with the improbable exploits of a wolf cub and his family. I must have included drawings to illustrate my story because I remember one of the wolf pack in a deadly fight with a herd of buffalo (though the image I recall looks more like a cow).

My early high school years brought on an obsession with James Bond and Modesty Blaise; books with content intended for readers much older than myself. Years later I wrote fan letters to Peter O’Donnell, the author of the Blaise books and was excited to receive a reply to each typed on special “Modesty Blaise” letter head. I regret not keeping them. They could have been a valuable part of my current autograph collection.

The most memorable short story I wrote in my teenage years was a James Bond tribute. After an accident my protagonist woke to find he was the “guest” of various Bond villains, and had been mistaken as Bond himself. While I regret not keeping the story, I recognise that my memory has perhaps given it qualities that I would find lacking if I had the chance to read it again. Sometimes memory might be a kinder literary critic than reality.

Withering Heights: wrestling with a classic

In escaping my “reader’s block” I’ve run into the first obstacle. It could have been avoided with adequate preparation and the application of more thought.

Instead of finding an irresistible, can’t put it down, what happens next, guaranteed good read to start me on the way, I picked up “Wuthering Heights”.
And in place of the thrill of anticipation and the desire to turn back to the book at every opportunity, I am begrudging the thought of spending my reading time plodding through its pages.

Its one of those books that has been sitting on my shelves for over twenty years along with many other “classic” Victorian era novels; then after seeing the recent dramatisation of the book on TV I thought I should see how the story REALLY played out. The series seemed to be rushed, trying to cram a lifetime of experience into two episodes and therefore missing so much of the character development that might explain the actions and attitudes of its characters.

I am barely 90 pages into the book and it seems I have more interest in how many pages are left to read than I am in the fate of its protagonists. However, having started, I am hesitant to add another failure to the growing list of books I’ve been unable to finish.

What is it that makes one of these books into a “classic” of literature? Why has this book survived and maintained a following when others of the same era have been forgotten? Is its style merely a trait of its era, common to most books of that time? (I don’t recall the older Jane Austin novels being so hard to read). Or is the style a peculiarity of the Brontes?

I have found myself continually re-reading sentences that on my first attempt have seem badly structured. But again that might be a matter of the linguistic differences between 19th Century Yorkshire and 21st Century Australia.

It’s been a long time since I read anything of its particular era, but I still recall the difficulty I had when I first read Thomas Hardy. I battled through Tess of the D’Urbervilles as if it was a test of endurance yet eventually, on reaching the end, I appreciated why it was considered a classic. I’m still not sure whether that was because I had finally grasped and enjoyed the point of the book, or whether it was merely relief that the ordeal was over

Why “Out of Shadows”?

I gave some thought to the name of this blog. My first choice was “Reader’s Block” – an idea I came up with after reading something by one of my former University lecturers (Richard Harland). He mentioned suffering more than 20 years of “Writer’s Block” that gave him a large collection of unfinished novels. No matter how many times he started, he would always stall and get no further with a project. (A situation that has changed and he is now a many times published author).

It’s a situation I can identify with. My own writing attempts never got to the stage where I could call a project an “unfinished novel” because nothing I attempted came close to resembling a novel in scope or length. The similarity was not with writing but in the reading. I realised I had an acute case of READER’S BLOCK.

Where Richard had a sizeable collection of uncompleted writing projects, I had a massive library of partially read books. Going to my book cases now I can see countless bookmarked volumes displaying evidence of how long they were able to maintain my interest before other distractions led to their neglect.

Post-it notes, shop dockets, business cards and assorted scraps of paper join “proper” bookmarks of various types: publisher’s and bookseller’s promotional material, tourist souvenirs, home made gifts…everything except the sacrilege of the dog-eared corner.

Occasionally I’ll come back to a long neglected book and will find that I can pick up where I left off. But usually I’ve forgotten too much of what I’d already read for the remaining pages to make enough sense. Then if I try to start again at the beginning I feel like I’m wasting time by digging over old ground, finding enough familiarity to rob me the novelty of reading something for the first time. Usually I find it hard to tolerate repetition and I find affinity with the robot in the film “Short Circuit” (“more input, more input!!!”)

So, the name “Reader’s Block” seemed appropriate for a literary blog written by someone who had difficulty committing to a book for long enough to finish it. The name could be offered to forewarn readers and to excuse myself for sharing thoughts on PARTS of books instead of giving intelligent comments on completed books.

If the name was so appropriate, then why didn’t I use it?

Someone else beat me to it and used that name for a blog, posting two contributions before leaving it neglected in 2001.
Before moving on from that first strike against originality I will note that the owner of the “Reader’s Block” blog provided a reading list of his childhood reading matter; and it was scarily close to my own, naming the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins at the top of the list.

My Second choice was “Out of Shadows” and I decided to stick with that name despite finding another blog with the same title. The difference in this case was the other blog was created almost five years ago but was never used. Nothing at all has ever been posted on it. I therefore decided to give the name a go and to liberate it from neglect.

So why was the title considered in the first place?

After my university days when I still had enough confidence to think a writing career was possible, I had a title ready for my first book: “Out of Shadows into Darkness”. Eventually when I realised the possibility of a writing career was fading away, I created an extremely limited edition (2 copies) self published collection of my stories and gave it that title as a form of closure on my writing ambitions.

The title has remained fixed in my mind since then, and due to the continuing absence of a proper book to which it can be applied, I will use an abbreviated form of the title for this attempt to relaunch myself into the world of books, literature and related arts.
“Out of Shadows” could possibly describe this tentative journey, with the hope that it will be a journey into light and not further into darkness and greater obscurity.