Reading Project, 9

Early in April, the old library in the part of our retirement village that is about to be rebuilt, was to shut down. Readers were encouraged to go there and ‘score’ any books they might like to take away. Don’t bother to bring them back was the second part of the instructions, and don’t return them to the new library the third.

Out I went with my walker, found about seventeen books that looked interesting enough to take away with me, and a cardboard box, thinking to pack them in that for an eventual delivery to Life Line, a charity that runs a massive annual book sale.

These books are now sitting on the floor in front of my bookshelves, no room for them on the shelves. Most will be one-read-wonders, so will be moved on, so no use making room for them yet.

I started with the five detective fictions, one of them a compendium of three novels. Fast and easy to read, good for the weeks that I was prepping for the medical procedure everybody loves to hate, a nerve-wracking time when easy reads are the go.

As we are now well into May, even I can see that I’m getting behind with this project. And I’ve ordered a bunch of study books. Wonder how I’ll go with reporting on those.

Book 22 … The Flood by Ian Rankin, published 1986 by Polygon. Strictly speaking, The Flood is not a detective fiction. But as the first published novel of one of my favorite authors of detective fiction, Ian Rankin, I thought I might as well take it along.

Rankin’s own introduction informed me that his various skills began with this little book (I’m assuming that like many first novels it’s about 60 thousand words, it has that heft) so could be worth it to read. He himself tells us its a young man’s book ‘all about the perils and pitfalls of growing up’.

It was a patchy read. Sometimes you can learn too much about a book before reading it. Some parts I enjoyed. Others not so much. The first of the three parts to my mind the more interesting though of it is left hanging.

Book 23 … Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin, published 2012 by Orion. This book is advertised with ‘Rebus is Back’ as though Rebus has been away, missing. Rankin has written nineteen Rebus books as well as nine or ten that are unrelated to Rebus. This one is about a crusty old detective, resigned from the police force and working independently, as a private eye, I assume.

Co-incidentally, on TV (SBS on Demand) I’m following Harry Bosch in much the same scenario, in the Harry Bosch Legacy. What I enjoy about both these detectives is their personal lives. They tell the stories not just of their police work but also about their private lives, and their frail humanity.

Both also have been left behind by technology and isn’t that a relatable feature of modern life? Anybody over fifty will always be a migrant to the computer age and will, by the time they’re seventy, need a guide.

There’s enough detail in the average Rebus, and the story arc is usually familiar enough, that reading it was quite relaxing. There isn’t that need to hurtle along hurry hurry to find out the end, because the end is a foregone conclusion. Rebus will solve the mystery and the perpetrator will go to jail.

Book 24 … Odd Hours by Dean Koontz, published 2008 by HarperCollins. Once upon a time I studied Koontz’s written dialogue, to improve dialogue in my own writings, and enjoyed many of his novels. The cut and thrust of the dialogue, the spare but informative descriptions. The suspense.

Then he went into the Odd Thomas series, and barring maybe one of them, perhaps the first, these are not his best. In my opinion. I think I’ll be tossing this one into the recycling bin.

Book 25 … The Survivor by Sean Slater, published 2011 by Simon and Schuster. I’ve already passed this one on to my reading buddy. It was good. Added to which, Slater is the pen name for an actual police officer though I don’t really know if that makes a difference, most crime writers are very good researchers. But not having the book on hand does mean I’m limited to the Good Reading Magazine, if they even have it in their files.

They do. Their summary … “Columbine. Dunblane. Virginia Tech. Winnenden. But Saint Patrick’s High? In his first hour back from a six-month leave of absence, Detective Jacob Striker’s day quickly turns into a nightmare. He is barely on scene five minutes at his daughter’s high school when he encounters an Active Shooter situation.”

I was pleasantly surprised that there was another detective fiction author whose style I like that I’ve never yet read.

Books 26, 27 and 28 … Inspector Montalbano: The First Three Novels by Andrea Camilleri, translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli, published 2002 – 2004 by Picador.
The Italian publication dates were …1994, 1996, 1996 publishe by Sellerio editore … have I got a treat for you … the Sellerio publishing group is based in Palermo the capital city of Sicily, and they’ve adopted … ‘The program at the origin of the publishing house is a return to a culture that Sciascia defines as “pleasant,” that is, a culture in which so-called commitment is implicit and not explicit, therefore a culture of lightness, which does not renounce elegance, a culture of ideas, yes, but in the form of beautiful things.’ [My paraphrase.]

That’s brave in this day and age. I’ll be enjoying the publisher’s statement for a while … the link https://www-sellerio-it.translate.goog/it/casa-editrice/

And in addition, Inspector Montalbano, an Italian cop show set in Sicily, was a favorite TV series about twenty years ago, so how could I resist?

Starting to read The Shape of Water, the first of the three books—they don’t appear to be a trilogy—I realized I’ve read it before, or maybe started to read it before, because I did not recall the end.

The first thing to get used to in the book, compared to the TV show, is that it is not a version of Keystone Cops, the way that the TV version often resembled. A bunch of police constables and members of the Sicilian public perpetually running after Inspector Salvo Montalbano.

In the book all these people have their own personalities, and it’s good to get to know their differences. OK, yes, there does appear to be at least one Keystone Cop, and that is the officer most often left behind to man the radio, (I’ll find his name …ah, Cantarella) He does have all the hallmarks of a comic turn. Though I bet in Italian he’ll be funnier than he is in English.

The Terracotta Dog and The Snack Thief are the second and third novels. Both are also full of interesting geographic and historical detail and cultural ambience. These are extras, of course, for all non-Sicilian readers.

One thing I really enjoy is Inspector Montalbano’s relationship with his cook. She’s the mother of a pair of miscreants, one of whom Montelbano put in jail. The inspector is a total foodie and Aline leaves him with a stream of interesting dinners in his fridge.

Then there’s Livia, his girlfriend. The love of his life, she lives on the mainland. They enjoy their separate/together lives until they meet the snack thief in the third novel. Then they talk about getting married. But we only get Montalbano’s POV and he has doubts. There’s no resolution so far. I expect this conundrum to continue to be debated further on in the series.

Montalbano’s love-hate relationship with his second-in-command, Mimi Augello, is mercurial with a bit of ‘plain speaking’ involved. When Augello is well-meaning, Montalbano is savage and vice versa. Augello sounds ready to move into Montalbano’s chair, but Montalbano is nowhere near ready to move up.

Fazio and Tortorella are his sergeants, “or whatever the hell they were called nowadays,” he says. Then there are all the rest, constable I assume, hard to tell apart, except maybe for Catarella who usually mans the phone and mangles any message that needs to passed on and having to be re-interpreted when Catarella grasps the wrong end of the stick.

I can see from my confusion that I’ll be re-reading the series to get the chain of command, so I can read a run of Italian names and know who all they all represent.

The comedy often is in unexpected contrasts. Montalbano spend the morning scrubbing his house and then himself. He polishes his shoes, dons a formal suit with “his most serious” tie, and then sits waiting for a visitor, getting more and more nervous. He knocks back a glass and a half of whisky just before his visitor arrives, and who tells him, “I’m almost blind, I see very poorly.”

The comedy in The Terracotta Dog dances around a tragic plot. We get a glimpse of what life must’ve been like during World War Two in Sicily when the German Navy used its coastline and harbours to repair and resupply its ships.

Sometimes an old cultural practice is discussed. Could the fact that the corpse was found with a stone in its mouth mean something other than is commonly understood? Huh, I thought. I have no idea. Another reason I enjoy this series so much, this dialogue you need to have with yourself to ‘detect’ the full range of meaning. I recommend these.

The books I have here are the first three of a long career. I’m keen to read more now, see if they become formulaic which is always a danger. I hope they don’t, I hope Camilleri can keep his plots fresh. I’ll be hanging on to this one for a while. Pity that it is a tome. It’ll need quite a wide space on the shelves.

Reading Project, 8

Book 21 … A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R R Martin, with illustrations by Gary Gianni. This edition, being a collection of three novellas, has a complex publishing history but as a collection it was first published by Harper Collins in 2015.

After I saw the HBO TV version, I wanted to read the original, as print novels often are better at showing the complexity of characters. Which was a good move, for as well as the first story, The Hedge Knight, that the TV series is based on it, it gave me two more stories, that presumably will be televised in the goodness of time as installments 2 and 3.

A hedge knight is a knight not sworn to a lord or having land—such as Ser Duncan the Tall—and I guess would be equivalent to a ronin in the samurai tradition. Both are men who wander their countries and offer their swords in whatever battle that will give them food and shelter for a time.

Dunk (short for Duncan) is a young, tall, strong and inexperienced knight wandering the Seven Kingdoms with his squire, Egg. As soon as I read “Egg” I recalled Maester Aemon at the Wall in Westeros ( A Game of Thrones) talking about his younger brother Egg and spent quite a bit of time wondering how that worked. Forgetting that with the right question (ie prompt) Google’s AI would tell me in seconds.

Which it did. Aemon was two years older than Egg and Egg will rule as Aegon V. At the time of these stories Aemon is apprenticed at the Citadel learning to be a maester and he will serve at The Wall.

You have probably guessed by now that I am a Game-of-Thrones tragic. And you are right. I have the book series on my bookshelf. I was a member once of a huge fan club, forty thousand plus fellow tragics, industriously discussing all aspects. Though they worked out the Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Liana Stark puzzle and I still don’t know how. I confess I just took their word for it, never could find the proof in the books.

All this is getting side-tracked from the book I’m talking about, but have the excuse that the these stories brought it all back, because it is all connected. Reading it the first time round, it seems like a light read, though the battle at the tournament is quite complex. I had to read that a couple of times, nailing down who fought who and who bit the dust.

But wait, why am I saying it’s a light read? I’m changing that. Only the first story was a particularly light read and I suppose the fact that I already knew the story visually meant I just glossed the imagery in the words.

That’s the problem with visual media of all kinds and reading books after seeing related shows. By feeding viewers with media-ideas for what things look like, viewers who are also readers tend not to read stuff that will clash with pre-“recorded” visuals and as a result miss out on a lot of good metaphor.

Such as … “The spiked ball whirled round and round the sky and fell toward his head as fast as a shooting star. Dunk rolled.”

That didn’t happen in the tv series. Someone else wielded the spiked ball and not at Dunk. Why I can still appreciate it. The other thing to appreciate is a character’s thoughts. … I failed them. I am no champion. I’m not even a hedge knight. I am nothing…

I don’t mind those thoughts, they’re what anyone would think in the situation. But … He never saw dunk the lunk, though, did he?… the twenty-five times that Dunk thought that of himself … that grated on me after the fourth time. (Maybe not twenty-five, just felt like it.)

In the next story, The Sworn Sword, (p119) there’s less introspection as there is more interaction between Dunk and Egg. They are on the road, traveling to their next meal.

This story is book-ended by the two corpses hanging in a cage at the cross-roads where Dunk and Egg stop for a minute for a break and again on their way out. They’re to deliver a barrel of wine to a place called Standfast and happen to stay there, to help the inhabitants get out of a scrape they have with their neighbors about water rights, a complex quarrel. Dunc ends up fighting the opposition’s champion.

The third story is The Mystery Knight (p233). Coming away from Stoney Sept, Dunk and Egg are well supplied. As they near a town, they first see a traitor’s head on a spike on the town walls.

Two and a half pages of Dunk’s ruminations follow, about a law that allows septons to be decapitated for merely talking because … “words are wind” after all … he says. Egg puts his thoughts in where applicable and the whole is one of Martin’s stylistic manoevres to thicken up the story line with historical descriptions including the Targaeryan succession through Bloodraven.

Six days later they arrive at a ferry crossing. Here, again, as they ride toward the inn nearby, there are possibilities of informing the reader about money, as in how little they have, “twenty-two pennies, three stars, two stags, and an old chipped garnet, ser …” Egg informs us and Dunc.

All three stories give the feeling of meandering. The pace is slow while Dunc and Egg are traveling, they are on horseback, with the horses probably walking. Fights are fast blow by blow accounts of action.

Between the slow travel and fast battles unfold long sections of story needing close attention. There’s a lot of detail being slipped into every paragraph. Story-pearls are being seeded in at all times. Early in the story we learn about Bloodraven’s history. At the end we meet him, and learn that he is Egg’s cousin.

I found this book in the YA fiction section in the bookshop where I bought it. The book is probably classed as young adult fiction due to the single story line, the youth of the POV characters, and because it is illustrated.

The amount of detail in it, though, suggests an adult read. Words, phrases, clauses and sentences all contain seeds and reminders that these stories are part of the whole rest of the Westeros culture. It’s one of those books I read fast for the plot and again, slowly, for the complexity.

.Illustration by Gary Gianni.

Links, 4

It’s getting so you can be proud for finding an image that hasn’t been meddled with by AI … so this is a real life situation …

Jar-test apparatus used for the experiment. The picture is taken from preliminary testing of different biopolymers by SN Applied Sciences at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330866661/figure/fig1/AS:941943265697815@1601588183793/Jar-test-apparatus-used-for-the-experiment-The-picture-is-taken-from-preliminary-testing.jpg

Rita de Heer, 4. Zebe at Xanthe’sDownload

Reading, 7

This session started while I was in hospital. Trying for easy reading matter. Easy to put down when necessary, for example to have a blood test done, or connect me to the IV.

My reading buddy brought me a book that he had trouble with and that I put aside after only one chapter, no way was I going to be able to read that in a scene where I needed to interact with maybe fifty people a day.

By day three I was hungering for anything at all to read. I’d forgotten to bring my tablet, and I’d been down to the kiosk in the downstairs lobby twice, and that had only magazines and newspapers available. Over two days, I bought two dailies of a right-wing newspaper, read them from cover to cover and felt like a foreigner.

Then, during one of my afternoon perambulations on the ward, I saw and remembered the existence of a lounge or two in each ward in that hospital, where visitors could withdraw to wait out procedures on their loved ones, and that there often were a couple of books.

Day three I sallied out and found a book that I normally wouldn’t read in a pink fit but needs must, as the saying is. A Readers’ Digest Condensed Book, in the new century renamed Readers Digest Select Editions. Still ongoing, I was amazed.

These are collections of “Popular, bestselling novels condensed to remove subplots or descriptions without altering the author’s style or story,” according to Reddit users and eBay sellers, quoted by Google’s AI. Hence me not reading them in a pink fit. However, by the 2020s I’m suspecting, the novellas could be being written purposely for the series. The four stories I read certainly seemed so.

According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader%27s_Digest_Select_Editions
I probably read

Book 18 … Volume 395 – #6 – September 2023 with • The Hunter – Jennifer Herrer • Hello Stranger – Katherine Center • Play the Fool – Lina Chern and • The Last Lifeboat – Hazel Gaynor

And because I was reading to pass the time, I have no clear memory of what all four stories were about except that one of them was about a bunch of newly-outed characters making the Titanic trip. By ‘newly outed’ I mean these people have not before featured in any of the Titanic fiction. And that they are probably completely fictional fictions. “IE did not appear in the passenger lists.” (Authorial note)

The other one I have some memory of is Hello Stranger, a thriller about a woman who has lost her memory. As this was the last story I read, I recall it best and it was good enough, in my opinion, not to give out any spoilers.

The remaining two stories? Can’t recall a word.

— — — —

After four nights, the days between, the two half-days fore and aft, and bells bells bells every minute of the night, I returned home. Blessed relief, with no bells clamoring all night I slept like a young thing.

Returned home with a prescription for another five days of antibiotics that had now to be taken by mouth, of course. And don’t bother with the probiotics yet was the word. The first couple of days I was quite well, getting stuck into the clean-up, and even managing to attend the weekly art class on Thursday morning.

By the Friday nausea began to rule. All the jobs I had begun slid into the background. There’s a pile of washed Duplo in front of me, another pile drying on the balcony. The grandkids have outgrown it, but some will still be useful to me for mountain-building. All of it needing sorting and I haven’t washed the plastic tubs yet.

Then there’s the laundry, one load ready to be folded, one load still in the washing machine, and another pile growing in a corner of the bathroom. Then there are the three days worth of dishes to be washed. Then … then …

I looked at my bookshelves, found something I hadn’t read yet, and promised myself time would pass. Five doses to go.

Book 19 … My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier, published in 2016 by Allen and Unwin.

I picked this book up in the library in the village community center some time ago. The back cover promised me edge-of-my-seat reading and it was not wrong. I read it in one gulp, which took me till 1.30 A/M, and some time ago I’d sworn off that kind of read. Sleeping only about five hours does not agree with me these days. It’s like I’m hungover the whole next day.

Spending a bit of time at https://goodreadingmagazine.com.au/ about this one, reading reviews, I discovered that people either loved or hated the book. Also, that it’s classed as young adult fiction, which I just don’t see. Just because the POV character is a teenager does not necessarily make it a YA fiction.

Some readers thought the novel well researched, others thought it badly researched. I’m neutral about that. Just so long as the research doesn’t intrude into the reading experience I don’t mind what lengths writers go to get a readerly reality. I’ve paddled that sea myself, researching the ins and outs of surfing for my novel, Mongrel, for example. Body-surfing was the only kind of surfing I ever did and then only casually.

Some readers loved the supporting character, the ten-year-old psychopath, thinking her very realistic. Others thought her tricks were mere childishness. On that point I really don’t believe the average ten-year-old will try to talk a so-called friend into killing her twin for entertainment. People who thought that, I stopped respecting the minute I read their opinion.

Che, the older brother who told the story, was trying to be a normal teenager and not succeeding. Neither of the parents were ‘at home’, so to say, and his little sister became his responsibility. Of course in the past, it was normal for an eldest sibling to have the care of the younger brood. In my past it certainly was, and I often had three young kids trailing me. Nowadays, with families of only one or two kids it is much less common.

Book 20 … The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Translated by Alan R Clarke. Originally published in 1988. The first English language edition in 1993. This copy is a 25th anniversay edition published in 2014, by Harper One an imprint of HarperCollins.

Its publishing history is complex. In 1993 my son was eight years old and I was a keen library reader and thrift store customer. That would be one of the reasons this book completely passed me by. That library was struggling a bit, new books few and far between, and thrift stores feature the old and remaindered. Nor was I in any reading clubs where people raved about it. Small country town. Not even a bookshop in those days.

Nor would I have been psychologically mature enough in that time to read it. I hadn’t yet started my writing studies, and the only hero’s journey I knew about, was me eking out a living. Thirty three years later–now–I read The Alchemist with joy. I recognized so much. The hero’s journey, yes. There’s been so much said about the hero’s journey in film, literature, how-to books and descriptive critiques, most people will be familiar with its concepts.

But also some of the Jungian concepts I’ve been studying for the past couple of years. The Personal Legend, for example. Do you know yours? I’m not yet so familiar with mine that I can talk about it in detail, though I’ve received a few clues from dreams. If you don’t yet journal your dreams, start now. I recommend it.

Then there’s The Soul of the World. I know that as the collective unconscious, but described much more poetically. There’s more. The plot of the recurrent dream of treasure in a far off place that returns you to your original place? A plot that I’ve read in a couple of recently published novels. It was an aha moment and me thinking, So this is where they got that!

Even the title. The Alchemist. The alchemist is a wise man. The last thing he said to the boy? “No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.”

This seemingly simple little book gave me a lot to think about.