Category: Reading

Why aren’t I reading more books by women?

31/7/2018

I’m a woman. I enjoy novels written by women. Indeed, some of my favourite authors are women, such as Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, Ann Patchett, Alison Moore. Six of my favourite reads from last year were written by women. So I don’t need to check whether female authors are fairly represented in my reading and reviewing, do I? It’ll just happen, in the natural way of things.

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Have your reading preferences changed over time? #amreading

29/6/2018

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Book groups are great because you get to read stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily choose. But groups are a pain because you feel obliged to read stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily choose. Sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise. Sometimes it confirms your prejudices. But best of all is when it takes you back to a book you thought you knew only to find you’ve completely changed your mind about it.

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Balancing the light and dark #amreading

31/5/2018

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A couple of years ago I blogged about the reasons I’d give up on a novel. Near the top of my list of eleven reasons, I wrote:

4. While I believe there’s room for a touch of humour in almost any topic, I don’t like comedic takes on tragic situations unless, like The First Bad Man, it’s really dark and over the top. Apparent denial of desperation and devastation can really freak me out.

3. Yet, much as I’m drawn to the dark side, I don’t want my reading to be totally bleak. There are ways of writing about trauma that allow for a sliver of light.

While these two points still hold for me as a reader, I’m not sure I can identify exactly where the balance lies for me between dark and light, either in relation to what I want from a novel or in how to find it.

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Does white space matter in #amreading fiction in print?

30/4/2018

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While I’m neither a reader nor a writer of poetry, I do appreciate that the shape of the lines on the page matters, the white space almost as important as the words. But does something similar apply to fiction? Do we need wide margins and paragraph breaks to give the sentences space to breathe?

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Should we plough through the classics?

30/3/2018

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If I’m lower on reviews this month, blame my book group! We’ve been ploughing through a Russian novel that gets mentioned in the same breath as War and Peace, although Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate was written in the twentieth century and concerns a war still within living memory. An epic tale of the human costs on both sides of the Battle of Stalingrad, it’s a fine achievement in its scope and in exposing the similarities between totalitarian states across the ideological divide. As with a short story collection recently smuggled out of North Korea, it faced a turbulent journey to publication, having been confiscated by the KGB on completion in 1960 and not published until twenty years later, long after the author’s death. But am I glad to have read it? I can’t honestly say I am.

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In a word: Asymmetry & Magnetism

18/3/2018

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I couldn’t resist pairing these recently published, unconventionally structured, debut novels about relationships: their intriguing one-word titles are almost interchangeable, with Alice in Asymmetry magnetically drawn to (and later repulsed by) her much older lover and the mother-daughter relationship explored in Magnetism inherently asymmetrical. My reading experience of both was mixed, strongly engaging with the second halves significantly more than the first. See what you think.

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Loners: Eleanor Oliphant & Upstate

27/2/2018

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Two novels featuring women, scarred by life, who have kept themselves slightly aloof. Of the two, Eleanor Oliphant is the most damaged, but small acts of kindness, along with a crush on a self-centred musician, might bring her out of her shell. Upstate is perhaps more realistic in confronting the difficulty of change, even though, when we first meet Vanessa Querry she’s no longer lonely as she’s fallen in love. Eleanor gets the better therapist; but is either of these women completely fine?

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My reading goals for 2018

30/1/2018

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2018 Reading Challenge

Anne has read 8 books toward their goal of 100 books.

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8 of 100 (8%)

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I’ve registered for the Goodreads challenge for a fifth year and, although my totals have increased year-on-year, I’m sticking to a goal of 100 books. Even though it’s hardly a challenge to curl up with a novel most evenings, in a business that is mostly about failing, why not give myself a target I know I can beat? Besides, this isn’t a marathon. Reading is more about the experience than a numbers game. That’s why I’m setting myself some specific targets in relation to quality and diversity, building on my analysis of 150 books read in 2017.

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My twelve favourite reads of 2017 #amreading

29/12/2017

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I’ve read 150 books this year (the image shows only a selection); according to Goodreads that’s 40,927 pages, with an average rating of 3.5. That’s slightly more books, but fewer pages, than last year. All but nine of this year’s reads were fiction, of which 19 (13% – slightly down on last year) are translations. An analysis of my first 100 reads found 71% were from independent publishers. Enough with the figures, let’s take a closer look at the year’s overall favourites.

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8 fictional Christmases #amreading

17/12/2017

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Although I’m not enamoured by the prospect of Christmas in real life, I do appreciate it makes fine fictional fodder. With a fixed date recognised across the world, it’s better for marking time than Easter. With raised expectations and family get-togethers, the season also provides the perfect backdrop for the conflict that fires a story. My second novel, Underneath, dedicates around twenty pages to Christmas and its buildup: from a new couple’s negotiations over where to spend it through a flashback to boy being painfully disabused of the myth of Santa to a retreat from the outside world with a love nest in the cellar that subsequently becomes a prison. You can read an extract later in this post, but let’s unwrap some other fictional Christmases.

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Not what we expected? #amreading

29/11/2017

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I’m sure, like me, there are times when you’ve come to the end of a book thinking, Well, that wasn’t what I expected! Both my published novels evoked that response in a lot of readers. With my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, it was a predominantly positive kind of unexpected, as my narrator, Diana, is harbouring no ordinary secret. Yet my second novel, Underneath, seems to have divided readers into those who were delighted, and those who were disappointed, it isn’t a typical thriller, earning me my first one star review and a reminder that one can’t please everyone.

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What’s your preferred length for a novel? #amreading

30/10/2017

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Like people, novels come in different sizes. With the rise in obesity, I don’t know what the average size of a human being might be, but I do know that the average for a novel is around 300 pages or 100,000 words – although it varies between genres, just as the average for a person can vary across countries. As a fairly small person, I’m nevertheless sometimes surprised to encounter a member of the same species who is two or three times the size of me. I suppose we have some kind of “standard” in our heads. Is it the same with novels?

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93% novels and 71% independents: My first 100 reads of 2017

30/9/2017

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Earlier this month, I met my “challenge” of reading 100 books this year. You can see them pictured above, beginning with my most recent read. Why not join me in reviewing the balance (or otherwise) of fiction versus non-fiction, type of publisher and percentage of translations versus English-language originals?

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Fiction versus non-fiction: which do you prefer?

31/8/2017

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When my mother took me to the library as a child she always insisted I take out one non-fiction book along with the novels I readily devoured. An obedient child, I did as instructed, but I wasn’t happy about it. Although I can remember one notable title (although I imagine I was quite young when I read The Air Is All Around Us), I’m not sure much was achieved. Even though I loved a series of biographies of the childhoods of the famous (which felt like cheating, as these were stories), very few of the facts have stuck. A half century on, my preference for fiction over non-fiction has not budged.

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What constitutes a holiday read?

30/7/2017

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Now that I rarely go away, I tend to forget that normal people go on holiday in the summer. Now that I read well over 100 novels a year, I also forget that holidays are when most people pick up a book or e-reader. But at this time of year I can’t help noticing that both the broadsheet weekend supplements and the blogosphere abound with holiday reading recommendations, which got me wondering what constitutes a holiday read?

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Do you hear a voice when you read fiction?

29/6/2017

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Signing copies of my new novel, Underneath, for a couple of acquaintances recently, I was interested (especially given my recent post on the unconscious and hallucinations) when both said they heard a voice when reading a novel to themselves. Because they know me, and I have a distinctive voice (and not necessarily in a good way), I wondered if they thought they’d hear my voice when reading my novel (even if it is narrated by a man), as has been reported before (I didn’t ask just because I’m a narcissist). But no, one said she hears her own voice, the other a voice specific to the story she’s reading. I wonder what that’s all about.

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Playing hard to get? #amreading

31/5/2017

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I recently outed myself as a Philistine, by rating one of the 100 all-time best novels 2 out of 5 (“it was okay”) on Goodreads. First published in 1915, The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford had sat unloved on my bookshelf for several years when it was chosen for my book group. When the time came to read it, I realised why I’d given up on it the first time round. It’s the story of the relationship between two wealthy couples, and the sexual intrigues and emotional betrayals behind their respectable facades. The novel is considered a master class in the unreliable narrator that has inspired many distinguished 20th-century writers. So why didn’t it work for me?

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Is fiction true?

30/4/2017

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When a therapist meets a new client she has little chance of verifying whether the story she hears is true. Given that the person consulting her has little motivation to lie, it’s reasonable for the therapist to take the client’s account on trust. Even on those occasions when the client has deliberately misled the therapist, as Stephen Grosz discovered after one of his clients seemingly came back from the dead, that deception is part of a deeper truth they need to bring to the light.

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Is reading onscreen different to reading in print?

27/2/2017

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This month, my book group is reading George Eliot’s Romola. As out-of-copyright books often come in tiny print, I didn’t want to order a paperback and, by the time I got round to consulting the local library catalogue, it was too late to order it from a distant branch. So I did a very rare thing for me – actually Mr A kindly did it on my behalf – and downloaded the free digital version to read on his tablet.

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A difficult second novel? I’m about to find out!

19/2/2017

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When I was struggling to find a publisher for my first novel, if there was one thing that annoyed me more than advice to keep trying, you’ll get there if it’s good enough; it was moaning about the difficulty of producing a follow-up. While I’m not renowned for my glass-half-full mentality, I’m screaming first world problem to the power of ten. These writers were blessed with a burden I’d have willingly taken from their shoulders, so how do I feel now I’m about to release a second novel of my own?

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<<Previous

Why aren’t I reading more books by women?

Have your reading preferences changed over time? #amreading

Balancing the light and dark #amreading

Does white space matter in #amreading fiction in print?

Should we plough through the classics?

In a word: Asymmetry & Magnetism

Loners: Eleanor Oliphant & Upstate

My reading goals for 2018

2018 Reading Challenge

My twelve favourite reads of 2017 #amreading

8 fictional Christmases #amreading

Not what we expected? #amreading

What’s your preferred length for a novel? #amreading

93% novels and 71% independents: My first 100 reads of 2017

Fiction versus non-fiction: which do you prefer?

What constitutes a holiday read?

Do you hear a voice when you read fiction?

Playing hard to get? #amreading

Is fiction true?

Is reading onscreen different to reading in print?

A difficult second novel? I’m about to find out!

2018 Reading Challenge

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