My 100th Post - a book giveaway!

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

As this is my 100th post, I thought that it would be nice to do something to celebrate and to say thank you to people who have been nice enough to show interest in my ramblings.  And what better way to do it than with a book giveaway...

So, this is my invitation to my readers: in the comments of this post, please leave the author and title of the book I have reviewed on this blog that you would most like to read.  I'll pick someone next weekend on Sunday 19th February 2012, so you all have a week to think about it - look through old posts if you want to - and decide which of my reviewed books you fancy most.  I've been trying to think of a fair way to pick a winner, and I think most likely I will put names in a container and ask my husband to pick one.  This is possibly, of course, flattering myself that I have more than one reader and will have more than one entrant.  The winner will get that book sent to them by me (probably later in the month after my payday!).

Here are my ground rules:

• My blog is non-profit making and for my own enjoyment and challenge, so the prize won't be anything fancy but will be the normal paperback copy of the winner's chosen book (or hardback if the winner's choice is not yet out in paperback).  
• To be fair to other entrants and give everyone the same chance to win, please only enter once.  If I notice someone make multiple entries I reserve the right to omit them from the draw.
• I'm not limiting this to UK readers, but if the winner lives abroad and I discover that airmail to them is horrendously expensive then I will send the book by surface mail.
• I don't think I have written about anything that is out of print, but if I do find that the winner has picked something that I find hard to source then I will ask them to make a second choice.
• For your own internet security, please don't put your address in your comment with your chosen book.  I will liaise with the winner through email, or private messages on Facebook or Twitter, to get their postal address to send the book. 
• I will announce the winner in the comments after the giveaway closes, so if you decide to enter please check in with the comments after the closing date on the 19th February to see if you have won.  I might be trying to contact you....

Good luck, and I'm interested in seeing if there is a most popular book that you would like to read for yourselves.  You could also include in your comment why you would like to read the book you chose, as I'd also be interested to know that (because I'm nosy about other people's reading).

"The Dunwich Horror," by H.P. Lovecraft

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

When I mentioned a while ago that H.P. Lovecraft was a gap in my reading that I fancied exploring, I was loaned a copy of "The Dunwich Horror" by Beth of the excellent blogs "Upward Spiral" and "Things I Wish They'd Told Me."  As part of my wider New Year's Resolution to take control of my reading, I thought I'd start by reading books that I have borrowed and hadn't got around to yet - so I started with this one.

This is a collection of short stories - unusual for me, as I read few short stories and tend to prefer novels - which comprises the following stories:

• The titular story, "The Dunwich Horror"
• "The Dreams in the Witch House"
• "The Lurking Fear"
• "The Thing on the Doorstep"
• "Hypnos"
• "The Outsider"

"The Dunwich Horror" is probably the most substantial story in the collection in terms of length and the uncanny, while the later stories are shorter but still effectively creepy.

The first story, "The Dunwich Horror," starts with some description of the country around Dunwich, and I found Lovecraft's description of nature particularly interesting.  Lovecraft's landscapes are paradoxically unnatural: nature is heightened and strange, claustrophobic and off-kilter.  The world of Lovecraft is a liminal one that is impinged upon by "elder things" who used to populate the earth and want to find a gateway back to reclaim their territory, or unknowable things from other dimensions which are discovered by men who covet forbidden knowledge: nature hides strange secrets.  His stories of old creatures beyond our imagining create a hind-brain unease; a primal fear of things unknown and unknowable: there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

I found his stories more unsettling than I did terrifying, which suits me as I am too much of a wimp for terrifying.  Another thing: unsettling haunts for longer than terror, in the same way that cold, considered bitterness can strike at the heart more than the passing heat of impulsive anger. Lovecraft's stories create a state of unease by suggestion and creeping dread more than explicit description - and, when he does try to describe his horrors, he tries to put their strangeness beyond the reach of language.   In particular "The Lurking Fear" has a striking moment when the speech of one of his characters descends into hysterical, purple prose where madness overtakes sense. The best horror films build a sense of menace before showing the monster - it's interesting to think how horror works in writing compared to film, as it is such a visual genre - and Lovecraft's strength seemed to me to be in creating a smothering atmosphere of menace and dawning comprehension.

His stories engaged my mind and my imagination to an extent that had me dragging down my old university reference books to find out more about him and his writing - a dangerous enterprise, as it started a bookslide on my over-stuffed bookcase - which is something I haven't felt compelled to do for a while.  He seemed sadly overlooked by my encyclopaedias of literature, so I resorted to Wikipedia (sorry). This intrigued me more, particularly the story of his unhappy and ill-fated marriage as I wondered how much this had inspired the twisted depiction of the marriage in "The Thing on the Doorstep."  This was always one of my failings as an academic: my tendency to be interested in deeply unfashionable and questionable biographical criticism.  As far as I am concerned, the author is far from dead: the mind that creates a world of imagination can be as fascinating as the work itself.

I found H.P. Lovecraft fascinating so far: it's not like anything that I have ever read before.  I'm not a big reader of horror - being of a nervous and impressionable disposition - and my excursions into it so far have been restricted to Victorian ghost stories, vampire novels, Joe Hill's fiction and a few Stephen King novels (a Lovecraft fan, as I think is Joe Hill).  I've realised that Lovecraft is now out of copyright, so I have downloaded the few of his stories that I could get from Gutenberg for future reading.

My New Year's Resolution progress

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Just in case you didn't read it at the time, I wrote about my New Year's Resolution here.

This week I bought 3 books, and borrowed 2 from the library*.

So far it isn't going too well.


*If anyone is interested, I bought:

• An ex-library copy of Kate Atkinson's "Human Croquet"
• A discounted copy of Matt Haig's "The Radleys," for which I have heard a lot of praise.
• On a whim, a discounted copy of "The Longest Crawl," by Ian Marchant.  I had not heard of it before, but it is apparently a comic travelogue of a pub crawl for the length of England (I bought it because it mentioned a few places I know in the blurb).

And I borrowed:

• "The Coincidence Engine," by Sam Leith.  I've wanted to read it since it came out, because I was intrigued by comparisons that were made with the brilliant Douglas Adams
• "The Hypnotist," by Lars Kepler.  I've also heard this was good and wanted to read it for a while - I almost bought a signed copy when we went to London last year, but got distracted by some obscure Tennessee Williams that I didn't have.

"One Good Turn," by Kate Atkinson

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Having read "Case Histories," I was in the mood to carry on to the next Jackson Brodie novel.

"One Good Turn" takes place about 2 years after the events of "Case Histories."  Jackson Brodie is at the Edinburgh Festival to support his actress girlfriend, Julia, who is opening in a new (dreadful) play that he has been talked into financing.  In his eventful stay, Jackson witnesses a road rage incident and also finds - and loses again - the drowned body of a young woman.  Jackson gets further drawn into events, and he finds it hard to adjust to his unaccustomed role as witness and suspect.

I have a strange relationship to Kate Atkinson's Brodie novels so far, and I have been trying to work out why.  I have a theory, but it is more a comment on my reading tastes than it is any criticism of Atkinson's style.  It comes down to my feeling that her style of storytelling is quite episodic; she jumps between different stories and character threads.  Now, I know that she is not unique in this and neither is it new - I remember being aware of Dickens changing focus between different sets of characters in "Bleak House" when I read it - but I find that the lack of central focus precludes my complete involvement.  When I start to become interested and involved in the story of a particular character, and then find that the next chapter has reverted to another strand, the book becomes easier for me to put down.  I normally find that I enjoy that chapter when I do read it but, because it doesn't focus on the character who has held me at that moment, I don't feel the immediate pull to read on.  Hence my feeling that I enjoy the books as a whole, while still paradoxically finding her books easy to put down.

I also felt that this episodic structure doesn't allow for a focal figure: even Jackson Brodie doesn't seem to play an appreciably larger part in this novel than any other character (if anything, ill-fated author Martin Canning seems to get rather more page-time).  Atkinson makes up for the shortage of Brodie with the introduction of a new character, Louise - policewoman, single mother of a teenage son, owner of a collapsing house and elderly, ailing cat -  whom I found very appealing.  Louise is called out to investigate Jackson's discovery of the drowned woman, and she develops a little, wholly understandable (let's face it, he's Jason Isaacs) crush on Jackson.  Atkinson is particularly good at creating interesting, strong yet vulnerable, female characters and, of the many examples of this in "One Good Turn," Louise is my favourite.  This might be something to do with cat-owners solidarity, and I am slightly ashamed to admit that I found it harder to read the poignant sections about Louise's elderly cat than I did any description of human-on-human violence.  I'm a bit worried what that says about my personality.

I think that I enjoyed this book more than "Case Histories" because, although I have made much about her episodic structure, I felt that the strands of this book came together more cohesively and effectively (but then, "Case Histories" was far more 3 different investigations that intersect rather than one narrative coming together).  I do have a copy of the next Jackson Brodie waiting to be read, but right now I feel like moving on to something else and returning to him a few books down the line....

"Snuff," by Terry Pratchett

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

One thing I like to try and do at the start of a review is declare any bias that I might have.  I, therefore,  have to admit that I am long-standing fan of Terry Pratchett's writing.  I am always impatient to get his books, so I bought this one as soon as it came out and then, in a feat of willpower (not something with which I am normally well-endowed), I decided to save the pleasure of reading it for my Christmas holiday.

In "Snuff," Commander Vimes of the City Watch reluctantly goes on a compulsory holiday with his wife, Lady Sybil, and their young son.  They go to his wife's ancestral home in the country, where the egalitarian Vimes is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of being master of a house full of servants.  He misses the reek of Ankh Morpork, but soon comes to realise that something in the country smells bad - and not just because his son has become obsessed with poo.

If I'm honest, it was possibly easier for me to delay starting this book because I knew it was a Sam Vimes book; he is a character that I have liked in previous books, but not loved.  If it had been a book that featured the witches, the wizards, or Death (some of my favourite Discworld denizens) my impatience to start the book might have been insurmountable.  However, I loved Sam Vimes in this novel and I now feel like I should re-read earlier books and re-evaluate my feelings for him.  For me, the strength of this book was the warmth and humour in the relationship between Sam and his wife, Lady Sybil.  Lady Sybil is a great character - I was going to write a great female character, but that would be like giving the Orange Prize when you could be giving the Booker - and I finished the book thinking that I would want to be like her: she is strong, passionately principled (like her husband), compassionate, a great mother to young Sam and a warm human being.  Physically I'd need to gain some weight, but I seem to be naturally heading in that direction anyway.

I have dug out my copy of "Guards, Guards." as I decided that I would now like to go back and read the novel in which Sam and Sybil met.  In general I feel like I need to give Terry Pratchett's earlier books another chance, as I remember enjoying them less than more recent books.  The Discworld is a feat of imaginative creation that has grown in depth and detail as the series has progressed and evolved, and I felt that earlier books were less rich and resonant.  It has been a long time since I last read them though, so I am aware that I might be undervaluing them.  In addition, some of the best science fiction and fantasy provides an alternative commentary on the world in which we live - and to the best of my recollection his more recent books seem to do this more effectively.  His books have become darker satires on modern life, and I prefer that darkness: they are more seriously funny.  I was aware in "Snuff" that the moral commentary on prejudice and narrow-mindedness in society is ground that he has trodden well before in his later books, but I forgive him that because he does it so damn well.

I still find his books very funny and I love his inventive use of language, but there is a bitter-sweetness to every new Terry Pratchett novel because I am aware that his illness means that new Terry Pratchett books are in limited supply.  The serious illness of any human being is tragic, but I am selfishly aware that I am also sad that each new book takes us closer to the last new book.  I just have to hope with every new book that there will be one more....

A belated award acceptance

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Here's another post where I have to start by apologising for being a bit rubbish.

On 29th November Annalisa Crawford of "Wake up, eat, write, sleep" nominated me for an "One Lovely Blog Award."  I have very rudely got caught up in other things and not thanked Annalisa for the honour, which I would like to do now (I'd also like to thank my parents, my husband and the friends and readers who have supported me!).

It seems that, thankfully, this is not one of these awards where you have to list 10 things that no-one knows about you.  I've just about run out of embarrassing things to admit.

It is one where you are meant to nominate 15 blogs.  I'm not sure that I will manage 15, and I'm not sure if blokes who write blogs will appreciate being called lovely.  I've come to the conclusion that I will still mention male bloggers - but stress that their blogs are lovely in a manly, masculine way.

So here are my recommendations:

• My lovely husband whose blog "Nerdology" is about films, TV, games and technology.  He's also just started to expand his media empire with a podcast on ITunes called "Nerdology UK."
• Gill Fraser Lee who writes an excellent blog about the wonderful Jeremy Northam, and who shares writing duties on another blog about Robert Donat (about whom I know very little, but I look forward to finding out more on her blog).
• I'm going to re-nominate Annalisa because she now has a new lovely blog about fitness, "The Gym Instructor," as well as her original blog about writing: like many people I aim to get fitter in 2012, so it's a good time to start a health and fitness blog.  Don't worry, Annalisa - I won't expect you to nominate another 15.
• Lady Byron, who I met through Gill and on Twitter, who has a blog about her travel exploits called "Lady Byron's Musings" and another called "Lady Byron's Lancashire Musings."
• My next blog is an old favourite which I read frequently and enjoy, "Spriteby's Bokhylle," which is about one of my favourite genres: crime fiction.
• And, of course, Martin's excellent "Seenit" for film and TV news and reviews.

The next few blogs are ones that I have only started to read comparatively recently, but I would highly recommend them ...

• One of my friends, Beth, writes a couple of blogs which are both well worth checking: an inspiring blog called "Upward Spiral" about "taking control of [her] illnesses so that they no longer control [her]," and another called "Things I Wish They'd Told Me" about parents and children.
• I've recently started reading a book blog by Joanne called "Being Obscure Clearly."  Joanne writes very eloquently about books and I enjoy her reviews because in some respects we seem to have similar reading tastes; it is good to read her perspective on books that I have read, and also to find out what she thinks of books that I have on my to read list.
• I'd also recommend John Hood's blog, "Generation Star Wars" about TV, film, Macs and gadgetry.
• I've recently found Victoria Watson on Twitter, who is a writer and has books available on the Kindle and a great blog called "Elementaryvwatson."
• I would also highly recommend Andrew Lewin's excellent blog "Taking the Short View," about TV, films and books.
• And, lastly but certainly not least, "This is Matt Barber," for another take on popular culture.

I think the custom is to post on their blogs to say that I have nominated them, as Annalisa did on mine, but please excuse me from doing that as I am now starting another headache (I can get a note from my Mum, if necessary).  I hope that people who read this might discover a new blog which they might not have known about, and that's great, and if anyone that I recommended wants to pass on the "One Lovely Blog Award," well that's great too ...