75 books read in 2017

Feeling creatively somewhat wrung out after 9/10 books of all sorts in ten years, I decided to put creating aside for 2017, and concentrate on other things, mainly teaching, mentoring and hugely important this last - reading. My own reading has taken such a back seat over the last few - time to catch up. 

I aimed at 100 books in the year, was joined by some friends, and we began a closed Facebook group - all with the same goal: to read as much as we could. We weren't all reading the same books, I hasten to add - not a 'reading group' - just a group of interested people, all reading, and all making a note - nothing more, of the books they'd read. A note, a word attached to an uploaded cover image soon increased to a line or two of subjective comment. And the group burgeoned to over 200 names. 

Did I make 100? No. I read 75. They are listed below in order of reading. Nothing planned - just following my nose and interests, some I ought to have read and somehow never did, others I stumbled across, some recommendations, others that has been on my shelf for decades...and occasional light humour as counterpoint. But it is interesting (to me) to see what categories they fell into:

Novels: 29
Short Fiction: 9
Poetry: 14
History/Military History: 5
Biog/autobiog: 4
Humour: 3

the rest... all sorts - philosophy, journalism, religious analysis...

I re-read some of my favourites by friends and colleagues, including The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, Some of Us Glow More than Others by Tania Hershman, Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy, The Flood by Maggie Gee, The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies, and Voices from Stone and Bronze by Caroline Davies. All to be recommended highly. 

I chose some books by writers of colour  - novels, poetry, short stories.  

The writer/book I am most pleased to have met/ best read of the year (thanks to a recommendation from one of the group members): Plainsong, by Kent Haruf  

I hated and discarded only one book: Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. 

Here's the list for anyone who is interested. ( [R] means a re-read.) 

[R]The Many                   Wyl Menmuir            #1     Salt a novel

Speak, Memory                  Vladimir Nabokov   # 2           Putnam           autobiograpy

The Shock of the Fall        Nathan Filer             #3           Harper/Collins novel

The Sun Fish             Eilean Ni Chuilleanain     #4           Gallery poetry

[R]They Called it Passchendaele  L MacDonald #5           Penguin military history

Ways of Seeing               John Berger             #6            Penguin           non fic

G                                       John Berger            #7             Bloomsbury     novel

Time's Arrow                     Martin Amis            #8             Penguin novel

First Person &other stories  Ali Smith        #9             Penguin short stories

The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson     #10           Penguin           novel

Too Loud a Solitude               Bohumil Hrabal   #11           Abacus           novel

Sieze the Day                    Saul Bellow              #12           Penguin         novel

The Book of Memory            Petina Gappah     #13           Faber             novel

The Way of the Strangers: encounters w Islamic State  G Wood   #14  Allen Lane religion/current 

The Bright White Tree            Joanna Seldon    #15            Worple poetry 

A Life Discarded          Alexander Masters        #16           4th Estate biography

Plainsong                            Kent Haruf             #17            Picador novel

[R] In Another Country David Constantine       #18             Comma            short stories

Trump and me                          Mark Singer     #19             Penguin journalism/bio

[R] Dark Roots                       Cate Kennedy   #20             Atlantic short stories

The Hundred Fathom Curve /John Barr           #21            Red Hen poetry

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl/Grayson Perry     #22  Vintage autobiography

The Havocs                              Jacob Polley   #23             Picador           poetry

Olive Kitteridge                    Elizabeth Strout   #24       S/Shuster novel in stories

[R]Never Let Me Go             Kazuo Ishiguro   #25             Faber             novel

To Kill a Mockingbird        Harper  Lee            #26             Arrow             novel

Britty Britty Bang Bang    Hugh Dennis           #27     Headline non fic/humour/history

[R] The Flood                   Maggie Gee           #28             Saqi novel

[R]The Essex Serpent        Sarah Perry           #29            Serpent's Tail  novel

lThe Runaway Jury       John Grisham           #30           Arrow               novel

Seven stories         Gabriel Garcia Marquez   #31           Penguin            short stories

Beloved                        Toni Morrison            #32           Vintage              novel

The Handmaid's Tale                   Margaret Attwood    #33                 Vintage          novel

After the Funeral                       Agatha Christie           #34     Harper Collins     novel crime

Contemporary Black British Short Stories   ed. Jacob Ross  #35 Peepal Tree   short stories

The Riddle of the Sands            Erskine Childers                    #36           Dover           novel 

The Berlin Wall Cafe                                Paul Durcan       #37             Harvill         poetry

Springlines       Clare Best /Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis         #38     Little Toller poetry/art/essay

The Snow Child                          Eowyn Ivey                   #39 Tinder            novel

In the Wild Wood                Frances Gapper                    #40     Cultured Llama  short stories

Boy in the Striped Pyjamas  John Boyne                       #41                                 novel

[R]Twenty Prose Poems             Baudelaire                     #42         City Lights     prose poetry

His Bloody Project  Graeme McRae Burnet                   #43       Contraband        novel 

Philip Larkin:Poems (selected by Martin Amis)               #44             Faber             poetry

The Wife - how it works         various                               #45  Ladybird/Penguin     humour

[R]Voices from Stone and Bronze Caroline Davies          #46             Cinnamon         poetry

[R]Candide                                   Voltaire                           #47 Penguin            classics

[R]Some of us Glow more than Others/Tania Hershman #48       Unthank          short stories

The Travels of Lady Bulldog Burton Toksvig/Nightingale #49             Little,Brown     humour

On Writing                               Stephen King                   #50 Hodder              memoir

Lusitania                                   various                            #51  Pen and Sword military history

The Disappearance of Adele Bedeaux Graeme Macrae Burnet #52 Contraband      novel

{R}The Redemption of Galen Pike  Carys Davies            #53             Salt        short stories

The 39 steps                          John Buchan                    #54 Samuel French      novel spy

Diary of a Bad Year          J M Coetzee                            #55             Vintage         novel

Holy Wind in Navajo Philosophy  James Kale McNeley  #56     Uni of Arizona     philosophy

Strange Pilgrims   Gabriel Garcia Marquez                     #57           Penguin       short stories

[R]Somme unseen panoramas Barton/Banning #58 Constable/IWM      history/military

Night Sky with Exit Wounds   Ocean Vuong                 #59               Cape                  poetry

Do no Harm                         Henry Marsh                   #60             W&N       non fic medical

On the trail of the poets of WW1:E Blunden McPhail/Guest  #61     Pen&sword biog/history/military

The Magic Toy Shop                 Angela Carter           #62 Virago                  novel

Elizabeth is Missing                  Emma Healey           #63             Penguin           novel

101 things with  mexican sprayer  Heinz Deppe         #64                   ?                  humour

The Seasons of Cullen Church/Bernard O'Donoghue  #65              Faber               poetry

Narcissistic Lovers  Cynthia Zane/Kevin Dibble          #66             New Horizon   non fic

The Wars                       Timothy Findley                     #67           Penguin           fiction

Very selected                        Mimi Khalvati                  #68     Smith Doorstop             poetry

{R}The Spire                          William Golding            #69           Faber and Faber     novel

The Soul of Kindness    Elizabeth Taylor                    #70            Chatto                    novel

Into the Wild                   Jon Krakauer                        #71         Pan/MacMillan     non-fiction

Once an Artist Always an Artist Capt C J Bloomfield #72  Self pub (1921) memoir/milit hist

The Parrot the Horse and the man   Amarjit Chandan #73               Arc                    poetry
An Anthology of Mine Rex Whistler #74 Hamish Hamilton poetry/paint'gs
Photographing the Fallen Jeremy Gordon-Smith #75 Pen & Sword military history

PELT AND OTHER STORIES by Catherine McNamara

I am delighted to welcome Catherine McNamara to the blog, with her short story collection 'Pelt'.  Over to you, me dear!

I had a gallery in Africa. It was tiny. As big as a garage no more. With Nigerian sculptures and Kuba cloth and silver jewellery from Ethiopia. It was a fun thing – I’m no fine arts graduate – and I confess I overpriced the sculptures I liked most so I could pay them off and make them mine.

I earned some money, which went out the window to buy more sculptures, cloth and jewellery, but I was queen of my art garage, looking out of my little window onto the street, with a huge rusted ship’s anchor parked on the hot concrete outside. On rough nights at the bar we ran next door I used to lay out a rug from Mali and fall asleep.

Many years later I came back to Europe (I live in Italy) and found I was writing story after story set in Ghana where I had lived. A pregnant Ghanaian woman tries to keep her German lover when his estranged wife comes to town. A failed doctor comes home to see his mother treat his dying step-sister with disgust. A village boy is aroused by classy French photographs. Even a sex worker – poor Janet in ‘Janet and the Angry Trees’ – is enlisted to care for her Italian lover’s elderly parents!

What to do? I’m not an African (just the mother of one) and most of the stories are set along the seams between worlds, between ‘the world of tin and the world of glass’ (‘Infection’, Pelt and Other Stories). They speak of the cross-over between modern African and European cultures, the long arm of historical exploitation and the residue from this in terms of migration, displacement, new structures of exploitation. Young men with brittle prospects. Young women with a savvy knowledge of the world who might do unsavoury things.

How to write of all of this without being a crafty traveller, a further exploiter of a continent that is not yours? 

Among the first questions I knew I would be asked, this is the one that makes me feel a little queasy. I know I can talk all I want about the rusty ship’s anchor outside my shop and the way the doctor never came when I was having my baby (getting oily palm nut soup after birth wasn’t my idea of champagne but the plantain afterwards was good), but I remain a suburban chick from Sydney who grew up on The Monkees and Gilligan’s Island. I can try, I can borrow, I can mimic. It’s a little scary. What I do know is that my efforts in telling a tale from the interior land of someone else’s nation – even if I called it home – must transcend place and nail the idea of story on the head. 

Tricky Vanessa has also asked me to provide you readers with a treat. Vanessa has asked that I think of a scene within the book, and think of a painter who could possibly paint it. Well, Vanessa doesn’t know that I used to run a gallery, that my walls are crammed with paintings and masks, and that I have been walking about the house for a good while now trying to connect my stories to my décor. It is driving me nuts. But here goes.

There is a swimming pool scene. It is rather saucy but I would love it explained with David Hockney flatness, although I would ask a Ghanaian painter friend (Kofi Agorsor) to do the deed. A young pregnant Ghanaian woman is breast-stroking down the pool towards the palms. There, with his big feet and his printed drawstring trousers, is her German lover Rolfe, who is canoodling with his estranged wife Karina, come to town to reclaim her man. The swimming girl is like a big swollen frog jerking in the water, insecure and embarrassed, approaching the Europeans. I can see Rolfe’s very big feet, sketched with Lucian Freud abandon. 

(Note from V: Will you look at this guy's work... isn't it fab? http://www.agorsor.com)

Lust and dirt from a world of places

Two foolhardy snowboarders challenge the savagery of mountain weather in the Dolomites. A Ghanaian woman strokes across a pool in the tropics, flaunting her pregnant belly before her lover’s discarded wife. A sex worker is enlisted to care for her Italian lover’s elderly parents. Hit by a car in Brussels, a young woman returns to her doctor boyfriend. And in Berlin, Celeste visits her suicidal brother Ray and his partner for the very last time.

Pelt and Other Stories lingers on the cusp between Europe and Africa, between ancient sentiments and modern disquiet.

Thanks so much for having me Vanessa and good luck with your new project!

‘Pelt and Other Stories’ may be ordered directly from the Indigo Dreams Bookshop, or on Amazon or from the Book Depository. Or from Waterstones or your local independent bookshop.

http://www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/catherine-mcnamara-pelt/4578701695

www.amazon.co.uk

www.thebookdepository.com

http://peltandotherstories.blogspot.com

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney and has lived in France, Italy, Belgium, Somalia and Ghana.  Her collection ‘Pelt and Other Stories’, semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize, was published in September 2013. Her stories have been published in Wasafiri, Short Fiction, ‘Wild Cards’ a Virago Anthology, A Tale of Three Cities, Tears in the Fence, The View from Here, Pretext and Ether Books.

Victoria Watson is 'Letting Go'!

Victoria

Isn't Twitter simply lovely sometimes? Example: I was panicking about organising a blog tour for the novel, sent out  a 'help!'  tweet, and made several new  writing friends as a result. Meet Victoria Watson, author of the short story collection,' Letting Go', who generously offered to host a blog stop even though she didn't know me or me book! 

So now. My turn to help spread the word about her collection which is now available for download on Amazon.  Good for her. I was allowed a sneak read - and she is here to natter.

So, I started off with a question about one of the choices that face a writer.  

Vanessa G: I very much enjoy stories written in first person - and was glad to meet your characters in this way. Was it a conscious choice to allow your characters to talk in their own voices? Why?

Victoria Watson: I don’t know why but I prefer to write in the first person especially when writing stories that have a twist because the reader then finds out crucial information when the character chooses to reveal it. I think the characters seem so realistic when they’re talking directly to the reader. Despite using the first person for many of my characters, I like to think they all come into their own. I am now trying to write some stories in the third person for my next collection. I’m enjoying experimenting with the voices and narration. I’ve just had a story published in I Am Woman’s first charity anthology and that was written in the third person. 

VG: Many of your characters are somewhat delusional and therefore unreliable narrators - a difficult thing to do. Can you tell me what tricks you employed to create the narrators of “Bye Bye Baby” and “Cry Baby”? 

VW: A lecturer of mine during my Masters programme told me to let the characters to lead the way. Much of the time, I don’t know myself what’s going to happen at the end of the story – that’s completely up to the character. I think “Bye Bye Baby” was initially going to be a happy story when I first started it but my character led me away from that entirely. “Cry Baby” started off as a writing exercise in the first year of my Masters programme and developed from there. Sadly though, some of that was based on personal experience so I felt I knew the unreliable narrator very well. I listen to music or watch TV when I’m writing. When I’m writing a particularly nasty character, I listen to loud rock music. I have to work myself up into a frenzy to get in that character’s state of mind. After I’ve stopped writing for the day, I sometimes find myself in a bad mood or an emotional state so sometimes have to take some time to get myself into my headspace again. Characters can be quite overpowering at times. I find that, when writing any character, you need to get to know them. You need to know their back story even if you don’t include that in the actual story. You need to know everything about them where possible. And once you’ve taken some time to get to know them, they will lead you wherever they want to go. 

VG: I think it is a very brave thing to do, turning your own negative experiences into fiction - congratulations. Thanks for the insights. 
Several of the stories have a very broad sweep, almost novelistic in approach. Can you see yourself turning any of these into novels? I am thinking particularly of ‘Inside” - in which a building is the focal point of a life - in your words “the place that defines the character”. I can see this as a novel - has that ever been a temptation or do you prefer the short form?

VW:  had some incredible reviews for ‘Inside’, many people who’ve read ‘Letting Go’ have said ‘Inside’ was their favourite story which was a massive buzz for me. When I write, I see the scenes I’m writing in my head as I write, a bit like watching a film in my mind’s eye so I guess that might be why people feel some of it has a cinematic feel to it. I’ve been writing a novel for two years which I started during my Masters degree but I find the idea of writing a full novel very overwhelming. I enjoy writing these short stories because I get bored with the same characters and plot after a while. I think I enjoy writing short stories at the moment because I’m still experimenting with voices and characters. I know a lot of novels that have started off as short stories and have been developed from there so I would never rule out expanding the stories I have written into longer pieces of work. I think with ‘Inside’ in particular, there is so much more I could work on because the building will have experienced so many different occasions and characters. 

VG: In “I Should Have Seen it Coming” you seem to be exploring the dangerous faultline between reality and fantasy. Without giving away the plotline of this (my favourite story!), can you explain how you approached this - did you plot out the story or did you let the character talk it out as you wrote? 

VW: ‘I Should Have Seen it Coming’ came about after I attended a psychic night at a local pub and, being the pessimist I am with a hint of wanting to believe, I found myself thinking how dangerous such a profession could be – for both the “psychic” and the customer. I think a lot of people who visit so-called psychics are looking for something whether it’s a message from someone they’ve lost or because they’re at a crossroads in their lives. In theory, psychics can bring a lot of peace and comfort to people but it could just as easily turn sour. I think some psychics truly believe they have a gift but I also believe that a fair few of them are very cynically preying on people who are desperate to believe. Again, the ending I had in mind was very different to the one that the character led me to. I’m not much of a plotter to be honest; I like to just see where the character leads me. 

VG:The powerful flash piece ‘John: Home Tomorrow’ has such an unlikeable character! I loved it. But at the end, I was glad and thought ‘oh good!’ when the twist came. Was that your intention? 

VW: ‘John: Home Tomorrow’ was written for a competition and it won a place in an anthology in 2011 (‘Home Tomorrow’, published by 6^th Element). I wanted to portray a man who wasn’t a particularly nice person who quite evidently thought he would always get what he wanted despite many despicable acts. I think there are many people like John around the world: the kind that think money and power will buy them anything they want and that their behaviour can be as reprehensible as they like as they will still always “win”. My intention wasn’t to ‘wish’ bad things on people like that but I wanted to show that money and/or power can’t always protect you from everything. I love that story because I showed it to my brother, who never  reads and he was really impressed. 

VG: In ‘Keeping Quiet’, I was amazed at the detail and the way the character seems completely in control of this story - running through relationships and names exactly as people do - mentioning family members in passing in a sort of breathless buzz. A whole extended family is created in just a paragraph or two. As asked before, is the detail planned out or do you let the character talk and you write it down? I loved this line - “...now we sit here, staring at each other, grappling for any kind of conversation.” That is so true of so many people - and put so succinctly. In this story, too, the main character never takes the opportunities life puts in front of her, and ends up embittered and unfulfilled. Was this the deliberate ‘message’ here?

VW: The reason I wrote Betty’s story like this was because I imagined it as an internal monologue. I could see Betty sitting in her chair, day after day, regretting the decisions she made. For someone like Betty, I get the impression she didn’t have a lot of time to mull things over a they were happening as she was always so busy – caring for relatives, keeping up a façade that her mother insisted upon and so on – that retirement and subsequent disability was the first time Betty had really had time to consider her actions and decisions. I truly believe that it would be dreadful to be on your deathbed and think “what if” and I think Betty is the living embodiment of this: what if she’d disobeyed her mother? What if she had got married? What if she’d spoken up and not been a doormat to her younger sister? She’ll never know. I think Betty’s ending is possibly one of the first times she’s ever taken control in her life. As the title suggests, Betty has kept quiet all of her life and so I just let her talk. She had plenty to get off her chest! What saddens me about Betty’s story is that there are probably many relationships that end up like Betty and her sister – sitting there with nothing to talk about. This may be a sibling relationship but I think it is representative of many different kinds of relationships including marriages. People rub along together for decades, carrying out chores, doing what’s expected of them but then when retirement comes, they realise they don’t know each other or have anything in common. I didn’t chart any family tree – it all came very naturally to me. Mentioning family members in passing seems to be a common feature of many old people’s speech. They often mention “our so-and-so” without really ever explaining who that person is – they expect the listener to know because they do. 

VG: Tell me about the 'twist in the tail' - there are several examples here - notably ‘The Waiting Game’ - I was heart in mouth, and then... (!!) 

VW: I’m glad ‘The Waiting Game’ had your heart in your mouth; that was my intention! I wanted to build the tension up, have the same feeling of dread the protagonist is feeling so that the audience could feel the same emotions as the character when the big reveal happened. Since I was a child, I’ve loved the stories of Roald Dahl. I’ve read every single one of his stories at least once and I adore his ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ where the twists are very intelligent. I read those when I was twelve and I still remember those stories. There’s no way I could ever compare with Dahl but he has definitely been a massive influence on my writing. I do enjoy lulling the character and the audience into a false sense of security and then twisting the story. It keeps me on my toes. 

VG: And it certainly kept me on mine!  Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Victoria - and loads of good luck with the book. 

Well - there you go. If that has whetted your appetite, Victoria's collection 'Letting Go' can be downloaded from Amazon here.  

Bio: Victoria Watson achieved her BA (Hons) in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies from Newcastle University in 2008. She was awarded 'Young Reviewer of the Year' in 2009 and completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing in 2010. 

Victoria has contributed to publications including 'True Faith' (Newcastle United fanzine), NCJ Media's north-east titles The Journal, Evening Chronicle and Sunday Sun. She has also reviewed for Amazon, Waterstones and Closer Magazine.

Victoria had a story published in the 'Home Tomorrow' anthology published by 6th Edition Publishing in 2011. Her work is also featured in 'Off the Record: A Charity Anthology'. She published a collection of her short stories entitled ‘Letting Go’ in February 2012. Victoria writes a blog at http://elementaryvwatson.wordpress.com 

As a survivor of domestic abuse, Victoria is proud to be a founding member of I Am Woman. Victoria’s interests lie in women’s issues, particularly in the Middle-East. She is a supporter of the Women 2 Drive campaign in Saudi Arabia. 

Victoria currently lives in the North-East of England and dreams of living somewhere hot and sunny, paying the bills with her writing. 

Victoria loves nothing more than settling down to read a good book. 

STORM WARNING - Coming soon, to a shelf near you...

Salt Publishing, November 2010