..I am now a free-er woman than I have been for a while and will be for longer.
At 37 weeks today the goblin is officially cooked but now has a five week window to make an appearance. Since my maternity leave has also started this weekend, it's become very clear to me that I could turn myself into a proper madperson by thinking it could be any day now, so instead I'm seeking a five-week project, one that's going to take plenty of effort and concentration and that I'll be wanting to complete enough that I'll barely think at all about when B-day might happen.
Perhaps, I thought, I'll just try to read a book a day for five weeks, thus making up in advance for any deficit in my reading time over the next few months. This isn't quite ruled out, but at the same time it's not really projecty enough. I could try and write the rest of my own novel - that's a good goal, but a bit too ambitious? Maybe a short story a week (but this doesn't sound big enough, not that I'm saying they're easy to write or write well, but there's not enough structure to it, not when most of the fibres of me are howling to pop, and demanding that I just concentrate on trying to discern signs that I might).
There's still knitting to do, though again this doesn't on its own consume enough attention. I will, of course, get entirely on top of all of my life-admin, and will be emailing all the people I don't email enough, and writing on my blog with a bit more commitment, and so on, but still they're not quite demanding enough. Do we think it's possible that I've not sufficiently bought into the idea that it's honestly going to be weeks and weeks more, and so am holding off just in case it's tomorrow?
Since I'm going to be good about keeping the blog up to date, I can supply it now with just a list of books, knowing that in due course I'll say a bit more about them.
21 Fat is a feminist issue (Orbach) - what a book. I don't know how I got to this stage of life without having read it.
22 Nurtureshock (Po Bronson) - quite a disappointment after how very much I loved his books about work and family. This was cobbled together science, with nowhere near enough added.
23 Toast (Nigel Slater) - I've been meaning to read it for a long time and was fairly sure I'd enjoy it. I did, though not like I enjoy reading his actual cookbooks.
24 Effective birth preparation (Maggie Howell) - like hypnobirthing, only a hundred times more convincing (to me) - this and the CD are regularly sending me into a zenlike state, now all I need to do is maintain it for the birth
25 Childbirth without fear (Grantly Dick-Read) - this is the classic of its genre and was originally written in the sixties, I think - in places it's horribly dated but in many others so very sensible and convincing that it's easy to overlook its faults. Both of these two would be books I'd recommend to anyone, though of course I'll tell you afterwards whether they turned out to be right.
26 Whatever you love (Louise Doughty) - I've been wanting to read something by her for a long time because I own, and mean to implement, her A novel in a year and was drawn to something about how she wrote in that. It may be enough to say that I got this from the library in the middle of today and finished it a couple of hours ago - I mean, not a classic of literature but such a read, and so believable. I'll be seeking to read more of her.
27 (in progress) Untold stories (Alan Bennett) - I'll say more about this when I'm done with it, though as it's my bedside book and regularly gets bumped by whatever else is interesting me, it may be a while.
28 (also in progress) Anna Karenina. This may suggest to you (rightly) that I finished War and Peace, which will get a post of its own in due course; what you can't tell from my simply listing its name is that I am enjoying it perhaps even more than I enjoyed W&P. I'm about half way through so might even finish it this year...
There are three more pieces of modern fiction in my library bag, all of which I was truly delighted to find on my trip today; I'm also keeping an eye out at thebookpeople to see if they do an Orange shortlist collection again this year since I'd actually have time to try it.
What's that I hear being suggested from the crowd? Perhaps that with all this reading I may not really need a project at all...?
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Friday, 25 March 2011
It's not a race
Again, I'm only telling you about reading, but I swear I will compensate soon with information about the quarter-hoody and the cat.
15 was Carl Honoré, and I'm honestly ashamed to say I already can't recall the name of the book, and it's already gone back to the library. It was essentially In praise of slow rewritten to be about parenting, and didn't seem to add much. Entertaining in a Gladwell-lite sort of way, but not exactly thought-provoking.
The next fruit of my last library visit was 16 Legend of a suicide, a bit of fiction by David Vann which I'd picked up because the dovegreyreader had raved about it. I did enjoy it though it's gone straight into my modern fiction mental category, meaning that I can't imagine wanting to reread it, and I suspect in another month or two I'll not be able to tell you what it was about (except - except - it does have some of the survival stuff that I love, not like chewing your own leg off to get out of a trap, but struggling to subsist, like in Cold Mountain and The Siege and lots of others that I can't readily recall).
Number 17 was the last from the library and of course I love it, it's Hilary Mantel and for me she can do little wrong. This is a shortish memoir she wrote a few years back, Giving up the ghost and it just reads like she wrote it, which is enough for me.
On the bench I've been rereading The now habit but it doesn't get a number on the list because I've only been picking out the bits I wanted to revise, so won't be reading all of it, and I am a scrupulous person who doesn't claim numerical credit that she hasn't earned. On trains, I am progressing with War and peace still, nearly there, and it made me cry again this morning when Natasha crept out to see the injured Andrew in the night and he, still delirious, looked at her and reached out his hand and smiled. I'm turning to mush!
For can't-do-anything-else, how-do-you-expect-me-to-read-proper-books-when-I'm-seven-months-pregnant evenings, Morse still never fails me - I don't think that I confessed earlier in the year to The jewel that was ours, but that was a little while back, and at the moment I'm in the midst of The daughters of Cain so I suppose those are 18 and 19. (And I've just realised! I forgot to give Studs Terkel a number, so he's 20, and I swear to tell you all about him (morally I think he should count as two books because it was so long, but it doesn't work that way (she says to herself, sternly))).
With several in-progress items on there I am almost ahead, which might clear me space to write interesting fun chatty posts about things other than what I'm reading. They may even have photos, like a proper blog does.
15 was Carl Honoré, and I'm honestly ashamed to say I already can't recall the name of the book, and it's already gone back to the library. It was essentially In praise of slow rewritten to be about parenting, and didn't seem to add much. Entertaining in a Gladwell-lite sort of way, but not exactly thought-provoking.
The next fruit of my last library visit was 16 Legend of a suicide, a bit of fiction by David Vann which I'd picked up because the dovegreyreader had raved about it. I did enjoy it though it's gone straight into my modern fiction mental category, meaning that I can't imagine wanting to reread it, and I suspect in another month or two I'll not be able to tell you what it was about (except - except - it does have some of the survival stuff that I love, not like chewing your own leg off to get out of a trap, but struggling to subsist, like in Cold Mountain and The Siege and lots of others that I can't readily recall).
Number 17 was the last from the library and of course I love it, it's Hilary Mantel and for me she can do little wrong. This is a shortish memoir she wrote a few years back, Giving up the ghost and it just reads like she wrote it, which is enough for me.
On the bench I've been rereading The now habit but it doesn't get a number on the list because I've only been picking out the bits I wanted to revise, so won't be reading all of it, and I am a scrupulous person who doesn't claim numerical credit that she hasn't earned. On trains, I am progressing with War and peace still, nearly there, and it made me cry again this morning when Natasha crept out to see the injured Andrew in the night and he, still delirious, looked at her and reached out his hand and smiled. I'm turning to mush!
For can't-do-anything-else, how-do-you-expect-me-to-read-proper-books-when-I'm-seven-months-pregnant evenings, Morse still never fails me - I don't think that I confessed earlier in the year to The jewel that was ours, but that was a little while back, and at the moment I'm in the midst of The daughters of Cain so I suppose those are 18 and 19. (And I've just realised! I forgot to give Studs Terkel a number, so he's 20, and I swear to tell you all about him (morally I think he should count as two books because it was so long, but it doesn't work that way (she says to herself, sternly))).
With several in-progress items on there I am almost ahead, which might clear me space to write interesting fun chatty posts about things other than what I'm reading. They may even have photos, like a proper blog does.
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Things I haven't even mentioned
10 Ina May's guide to childbirth (Ina May Gaskin); 11 Misconceptions (Naomi Wolf); 12 Hypnobirthing (Marie Mongan), you can see a theme here and really, unless this is the sort of thing you find interesting, you're not going to find it interesting (makes me think of Brod in Everything is Illuminated, who wouldn't want a boy to think she was pretty unless he was the kind of boy who thought she was pretty); 13 (in progress) more Penelope Leach, Childcare Today, and there must be more that I've already forgotten. This is the thing about not keeping up to date, things slip away so fast, and the whole point of keeping records is to fight against this, but it doesn't work if you don't do it.
And I even started this a week ago and didn't finish, so now I can add that I finished Hypnobirthing, and am nearly through a light little Honoré, and I forgot all about 14 The visual display of quantitative information (Tufte), which might not be the sort of thing you imagine reading for pleasure, but really you should try it.
I may get round to telling more about the books on this list, or I may just see it as a catchup to make sure my records are up to date even if unsubstantiated, and a kick to get back to writing this without the overwhelmed fear of behindness. It just seems like I'm spending increasing amounts of time sitting around Being Pregnant, regardless of how much I swore I wouldn't, and I'm not sure how interesting it is to read about. But then, on the two mornings a week that I make it to the Aldwych, I still have a captivated 20 minutes on a bench with a polystyrene coffee and Studs Terkel, and it still always always works to help me with my perspective, to give me something wider to think about than just the kicks in my belly (though, let's be honest, they're winning).
And I even started this a week ago and didn't finish, so now I can add that I finished Hypnobirthing, and am nearly through a light little Honoré, and I forgot all about 14 The visual display of quantitative information (Tufte), which might not be the sort of thing you imagine reading for pleasure, but really you should try it.
I may get round to telling more about the books on this list, or I may just see it as a catchup to make sure my records are up to date even if unsubstantiated, and a kick to get back to writing this without the overwhelmed fear of behindness. It just seems like I'm spending increasing amounts of time sitting around Being Pregnant, regardless of how much I swore I wouldn't, and I'm not sure how interesting it is to read about. But then, on the two mornings a week that I make it to the Aldwych, I still have a captivated 20 minutes on a bench with a polystyrene coffee and Studs Terkel, and it still always always works to help me with my perspective, to give me something wider to think about than just the kicks in my belly (though, let's be honest, they're winning).
Monday, 31 January 2011
Have nothing in your house...
...that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
What Morris forgot to mention was the category of things that you made yourself, which may be slightly funny-shaped, and a bit too elfin-sized to be practical (shown on my hand for scale), but that you'd happily fill the house with given the chance.
Also, it's the last day of January and I haven't written all about book 7 A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore on glorious funny sad form as always, or 8 Baby and child, a seventies classic by Penelope Leach. It's sort of one that if you've read it you'll know whether or not you love it, and if you haven't then it may well be because the life-course hasn't taken you that way. For the record, I loved it.
I'm also preparing to go on and on about Studs Terkel, but with only two days on the bench every week now, progress is slow.
And, if my magnum opus gets proofread tonight, I might manage to finish my latest Mantel-fix, 9 Fludd, but I'll not say more until I have (I wanted to finish it in January. I wanted the year to have got off to a balanced reading start and as always, I don't feel I'm doing enough of it, nor getting enough time to appreciate it and write about it. But already I am delighted to have my records from 2010, so even if I only name them, it's something I'll look back on and be pleased).
What Morris forgot to mention was the category of things that you made yourself, which may be slightly funny-shaped, and a bit too elfin-sized to be practical (shown on my hand for scale), but that you'd happily fill the house with given the chance.
Also, it's the last day of January and I haven't written all about book 7 A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore on glorious funny sad form as always, or 8 Baby and child, a seventies classic by Penelope Leach. It's sort of one that if you've read it you'll know whether or not you love it, and if you haven't then it may well be because the life-course hasn't taken you that way. For the record, I loved it.
I'm also preparing to go on and on about Studs Terkel, but with only two days on the bench every week now, progress is slow.
And, if my magnum opus gets proofread tonight, I might manage to finish my latest Mantel-fix, 9 Fludd, but I'll not say more until I have (I wanted to finish it in January. I wanted the year to have got off to a balanced reading start and as always, I don't feel I'm doing enough of it, nor getting enough time to appreciate it and write about it. But already I am delighted to have my records from 2010, so even if I only name them, it's something I'll look back on and be pleased).
Sunday, 16 January 2011
It's been Tony Parker week
And it seems he's converging on a point, really the thing he cares about, being crime and particularly how people end up in situations where it seems to them that the only realistic options are criminal ones. So book 4 was The Frying Pan: a prison and its prisoners, about a "psychiatric prison" somewhere in the midlands, which was a the time of writing (early seventies) very modern and experimental. As usual, the book is virtually all transcribed interviews with little commentary. While there are a few "hard nuts" in there, most of the interest (for me) lies in the people who are more on the fringes, who seem to have fallen into repeated petty offences without being able to see a way to change what they do.
This is taken forward in number 5 The unknown citizen, which looks at just one person, his life so far and the efforts of a few altruistic others to help him. It's a short, sad book and it's hard not to come away wondering what on earth there is left to be done for Charlie. He had a hard childhood, but so did both his brother and his sister, and it's indisputable that every time he leaves prison he does something else wrong. Parker argues, though, that he's incapable of any other kind of behaviour, and that punishing him for it rather than adapting our society to find ways to help him has as much logic as punishing a man without legs for being unable to walk.
I'm all out of Parker at the moment, so the bench book I start tomorrow morning is going to be some Studs Terkel. In fiction, I'm intermittently enjoying book 6, the english translation of I promessi sposi: I'm reading and listening to a very abridged version in Italian but felt I should look at the full one. It reads as you might expect something to read that was written in the early nineteenth century and then translated without too much thought for readability. If we could cut out some of the Milanese politics I think I'd find it easier going - at least it's helping me appreciate how much Italian I now understand since the abridged version is seeming like a breeze.
This is taken forward in number 5 The unknown citizen, which looks at just one person, his life so far and the efforts of a few altruistic others to help him. It's a short, sad book and it's hard not to come away wondering what on earth there is left to be done for Charlie. He had a hard childhood, but so did both his brother and his sister, and it's indisputable that every time he leaves prison he does something else wrong. Parker argues, though, that he's incapable of any other kind of behaviour, and that punishing him for it rather than adapting our society to find ways to help him has as much logic as punishing a man without legs for being unable to walk.
I'm all out of Parker at the moment, so the bench book I start tomorrow morning is going to be some Studs Terkel. In fiction, I'm intermittently enjoying book 6, the english translation of I promessi sposi: I'm reading and listening to a very abridged version in Italian but felt I should look at the full one. It reads as you might expect something to read that was written in the early nineteenth century and then translated without too much thought for readability. If we could cut out some of the Milanese politics I think I'd find it easier going - at least it's helping me appreciate how much Italian I now understand since the abridged version is seeming like a breeze.
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Staying indoors
There's just no appeal to it out there. It's grey and it's cold and the rain is spitting in faces, and it doesn't even feel fresh, just spent.
So far in January I have read three books, I think.
1. Lighthouse, Tony Parker talking to lighthouse keepers, gave me plenty of lovely imaginings and suggested it might be a lifestyle I could get used to (apart from the boat travel and all that brass-cleaning)
2. What mothers do, Naomi Stadlen, a lovely little book which is really all just about the relationship between a mother and her new baby, and how much meaningful work is done in the first few months as the mother learns to read her child. It made me want Denzil to get a move on.
3. Annie's coming out (Crossley and McDonald), a fascinating Pelican about a teenager with cerebral palsy which gave her such physical difficulties that it was assumed (by the institution she'd been in since the age of three) that she was mentally incapable. Rosie, employed as an assistant in the institution, discovered that Annie had highly developed mental functionings and worked on building up ways that she could communicate these with the world, culminating in a court case where Annie demanded her right to be allowed to leave the institution. Fascinating and disturbing and the sort of thing you hope doesn't still happen.
I'm still moving on with War and Peace, which is regularly staggering me into silence. When you read Tolstoy's accounts of how a war was not down to big decisions of the leaders but individual actions motivated by human weakness, it first makes you look sadly at the world and second leads you to ask what the point is in ever trying to write anything if you can't write like that.
This weekend there will be some more reading, and a proper launch of Project Clothe The Baby, just as soon as I've decided on some patterns.
So far in January I have read three books, I think.
1. Lighthouse, Tony Parker talking to lighthouse keepers, gave me plenty of lovely imaginings and suggested it might be a lifestyle I could get used to (apart from the boat travel and all that brass-cleaning)
2. What mothers do, Naomi Stadlen, a lovely little book which is really all just about the relationship between a mother and her new baby, and how much meaningful work is done in the first few months as the mother learns to read her child. It made me want Denzil to get a move on.
3. Annie's coming out (Crossley and McDonald), a fascinating Pelican about a teenager with cerebral palsy which gave her such physical difficulties that it was assumed (by the institution she'd been in since the age of three) that she was mentally incapable. Rosie, employed as an assistant in the institution, discovered that Annie had highly developed mental functionings and worked on building up ways that she could communicate these with the world, culminating in a court case where Annie demanded her right to be allowed to leave the institution. Fascinating and disturbing and the sort of thing you hope doesn't still happen.
I'm still moving on with War and Peace, which is regularly staggering me into silence. When you read Tolstoy's accounts of how a war was not down to big decisions of the leaders but individual actions motivated by human weakness, it first makes you look sadly at the world and second leads you to ask what the point is in ever trying to write anything if you can't write like that.
This weekend there will be some more reading, and a proper launch of Project Clothe The Baby, just as soon as I've decided on some patterns.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
2010, 2011
This will either be a short one or a long one.
I was going to spend some time yesterday thinking over 2010, what I'd learned, and so on, but it turns out I don't have enough patience for all that reviewing. I could say well, the momentous event was getting married (which it was) although really, I think that deciding to get married might have been even more so. And I did some interesting work stuff, and some interesting study stuff, and welcomed into my home the loveliest cat in the world (would it be ok to buy her an anniversary present?).
But already I'm all over planning for 2011. Mainly I'll be having a baby, though that doesn't seem to need much intervention from me at the moment, and is proceeding along nicely without me. But I'm also going to be enthusiastic and brave and curious and open-minded and kind and generous, and I'm going to have a sense of perspective, and I'm going to remember that other people have off days too. These all fail the resolution tests, because they're not specific or measurable, but what's wrong with just deciding on some ways you would like your mindset to be?
Haven't quite decided what to do about books this year, in particular about numbering for ones I started in 2010 but finish this year. I think I'll take them off the 2010 total and add them into 2011, not there are many though of course War & Peace is lingering. Perhaps as the year progresses it will be harder to find time for reading, though a newborn can't take up that much time, can it?
(I nearly didn't write this post at all after reading what The Heartful Blogger had to say about resolutions. But since I'm going nowhere near the idea of size 8 skinny jeans, I reckon it's just about acceptable...)
I was going to spend some time yesterday thinking over 2010, what I'd learned, and so on, but it turns out I don't have enough patience for all that reviewing. I could say well, the momentous event was getting married (which it was) although really, I think that deciding to get married might have been even more so. And I did some interesting work stuff, and some interesting study stuff, and welcomed into my home the loveliest cat in the world (would it be ok to buy her an anniversary present?).
But already I'm all over planning for 2011. Mainly I'll be having a baby, though that doesn't seem to need much intervention from me at the moment, and is proceeding along nicely without me. But I'm also going to be enthusiastic and brave and curious and open-minded and kind and generous, and I'm going to have a sense of perspective, and I'm going to remember that other people have off days too. These all fail the resolution tests, because they're not specific or measurable, but what's wrong with just deciding on some ways you would like your mindset to be?
Haven't quite decided what to do about books this year, in particular about numbering for ones I started in 2010 but finish this year. I think I'll take them off the 2010 total and add them into 2011, not there are many though of course War & Peace is lingering. Perhaps as the year progresses it will be harder to find time for reading, though a newborn can't take up that much time, can it?
(I nearly didn't write this post at all after reading what The Heartful Blogger had to say about resolutions. But since I'm going nowhere near the idea of size 8 skinny jeans, I reckon it's just about acceptable...)
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