"An Autumn Crush," by Milly Johnson

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

I received a review copy of this book courtesy of the publishers, Simon and Schuster.  This book is due for release tomorrow (Thursday 29th September 2011), so - even though girly romances are not my usual taste - I was excited to get a preview copy.  "An Autumn Crush" is Milly Johnson's sixth book, but is the first by her that I have read.

Juliet Miller is interviewing for possible flatmates with her flamboyant gay friend, Coco.  Following a series of humorous but disastrous possible flatmates (said of a plump vegan, "How can anyone get an arse that big just from eating celery?"), Juliet isn't optimistic when her final interviewee is late because she stopped to rescue a limping hedgehog.  However, she bonds with fellow divorcee Florence (Floz) over chocolate biscuits and the two become flatmates and friends.  The two are contrasting characters: Juliet is ebullient and confident, while Floz is more reserved and introverted.  The romantic intrigue is introduced with the characters of Juliet's brother, Guy, and his friend Steve, who moonlight as wrestlers.

One thing that I liked about this book is that it is as much about female (and male) friendship, as it is a romance.  Milly Johnson's creations are warm and likeable, and I enjoyed spending time with them. The Floz plot - henceforth known to me as the flot - is darker and tinged with a sadness that added an extra dimension to the book.  As my own temperament is more quiet Floz than extrovert Juliet, I found the flot very affecting and I was rooting for Floz to finally find her happy ending.  I don't want to make this sound depressing though, as Milly Johnson also has a strong vein of observational humour in her writing (I was particularly fond of the OAP wrestling audiences).

I'm not sure that I would read another book by Milly Johnson - but that is because my own personal preference is for the mysterious or creepy.  I do have to admit to a deep-seated prejudice against "chick-lit," but almost despite myself I quite enjoyed this book as a respite from my usual reading list of blood and mayhem.

"Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing," by Tim Parks

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

I decided to seek this book out after seeing an advertising poster when we went on holiday to London.  I was - and I still am - feeling stressed, tired and rather run down.  It was the same feeling that compelled me to read "A Time to Keep Silence," about the Patrick Leigh Fermor's monastic retreats.   It is probably the height of vanity to quote yourself, but I don't think that I can describe how I have been feeling any better than I did then when I wrote that I felt as if I was "losing the war of attrition with modern life."

This state of mind meant that I was attracted to a book that might show me the path to silence and stillness.  This is not that book, but it was a very interesting read.  Tim Parks is also a writer of fiction - he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997 - but this work of non-fiction is the first that I have read by him.  As the book starts, Tim Parks has been struggling for years with mounting physical pain that is becoming unbearable.  His symptoms are thought to be prostate related and an operation is suggested, although medical tests prove to be inconclusive.  However, a book that he discovers on the internet - "A Headache in the Pelvis" - sets him on a path where he finds physical respite from his symptoms through meditation.

This is not a self-help book; it is far more interesting than that.  Tim Parks comes to the realisation that his writing and his relationship with language are closely intertwined with the health problems that he has been experiencing.  The book evolves into being an insight into the mind and body of a compulsive writer and linguist; someone whose focus has been on his mental life to the extent that he has neglected his body.  Through "A Headache in the Pelvis" he comes to realise that "the strange pains that [he] had been feeling had in some way to do with all those years sitting tensely, racking [his] brains over sheets of empty paper, building up hopes, rejoicing over some small achievement, over-reacting to setbacks and disappointments."  His mental activity is accompanied by physical tension; in the same way that a light-bulb gives off heat as a by-product, his over-active brain spills out into nervous kinetic energy such as jerking his knee up and down.  His mind and body are rarely still, and he is in conflict with himself.

Parks, who values highly his acuity with language, comes to realise that what he prizes is the very thing that his sabotaging him.  In filtering all his experiences through language - already mentally writing a review of a film while watching it, trying to describe a painting - he loses a sense of pleasure or fulfillment in the present moment.  The key to this realisation is thinking of the weeks he lost in mentally rehearsing and revising his Booker acceptance speech, only to lose out to Arundhati Roy.  This insight leads him to acknowledge that "words seem to take [him] away from the present moment."  Through the relaxation techniques he learns by reading "A Headache in the Pelvis" and attending meditation retreats, he finds freedom from the compulsion to verbalise every experience and comes to inhabit his own body with equanimity.

Tim Parks lives in Italy and works as a translator, and I came to realise that there is an element of translation in this book - but translation of physical sensation, body language, into words.  The relation between body and language is explored in this book: even as Tim Parks' mind rejects and rebels against the new age flummery spouted by some of the practitioners that he sees, his body responds to their treatments and therapies.  This is a book of paradoxes that somehow unify where they should clash.  This book charts Tim Parks' progression of escaping from language into his own body - but then has to render it back into language to communicate with the reader.  This shouldn't work, and the fact that it does is testament to his powers of description and mental agility.

One element of the experience he undergoes is visual, and the book is peppered with small images of things that engrossed him at the time.  One of these is a painting by Velazquez "Waterseller of Seville."  He is fascinated by the painting, and by the stillness of the hands meeting in the exchange of the glass of water.  This painting leads to a beautiful image of the exchange between author and reader "sharing words [...] like a glass of clear water on a hot summer afternoon."  It is a curious dichotomy that a book in which words are problematic also has passages of meditations on language that are quite beautiful and it seems, as the book closes, that Tim Parks has managed to reconcile his mind and body, language and physical sensation, in order to find respite from his pains.

"20th Century Ghosts," by Joe Hill

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

I know Joe Hill as a writer of horror fiction.  One of my early reviews when I started this blog was on his novel, "Horns."  The first book of his that I read, "Heart-shaped Box," is probably still my favourite of his books.  You won't find a review of this on my blog, as I read it before I started writing here, but I do intend to re-read it and write about it at some point.  I'm not a big reader of short stories - with the exception of masters of the form such as Conan Doyle or M.R. James - so it is quite unusual for me to pick up a short story collection.  However, as I enjoyed what I had read by Joe Hill so far, I thought that I would give his collection of short stories, "20th Century Ghosts," a whirl.

Like any collection of short stories, there are some that appeal more than others.  I was a bit too squeamish for the bodily excretions of "You Will Hear the Locust Sing," which owes a debt to Kafka's "Metamorphosis."  My favourite stories in the collection were ones that I didn't find out-and-out horrific or scary - Hill's stories are often more subtle than that - but rather are unsettling in a way that is not easy to define.  One of the stories which has stuck with me most, "In the Rundown," has no supernatural element.  It is unresolved and ambiguous - although there is a strong suggestion of where it is heading, and it isn't good for the protagonist - and I found this story very unsettling.  This ominous ambiguity is a trait shared by some of the other, more supernaturally inflected, stories such as "My Father's Mask" and "Voluntary Committal."  I get deeply frustrated and annoyed with open-ended films, but, oddly, this lack of resolution and resistance of concrete explanation is one thing that I liked most about these stories.

There is an allusiveness in some of Hill's stories which appealed to the nerd in me.  Although it would not exactly be a spoiler to reveal the setting for "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead," or to mention the back story for "Abraham's Boys," as Hill himself makes these details explicit early in the story, I am refraining from doing so because I think other readers should be able to experience the moment of recognition that I felt.  Part of the pleasure of "Abraham's Boys" was the surprise of the early revelation, whereas part of the pleasure of "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" is for the cinema or horror fan to recognise the setting ahead of Joe Hill's reveal.  As another example, "Last Breath," a story that I enjoyed a lot, has a "Tales of the Unexpected" leaning - made more noticeable by a Roald Dahl name check - and, on a tangent, made me think back to a British horror film I once saw called "The Asphyx" about trying to capture the spirit of death.  I am by no means implying that Joe Hill's writing is derivative, but more that it shows his awareness of his predecessors, the traditions of horror/supernatural writing and cinema, and his willingness to play with and use this knowledge. 

The majority of these stories do have elements of horror writing and the supernatural.  However, one of the strengths of Hill's writing is that his stories are grounded in reality and the imperatives of human emotion.  The title story, as an example, is ultimately more poignant than frightening.  To draw a reference from screen horror, Hill's stories are less the blatant gore of something like "Saw," and more the atmospheric chills of Hammer, or the suggestive strangeness of "The Twilight Zone."  Hill can manage both the 100 metre brevity needed for the short story, as well as the marathon feat of stamina of a novel, and I am looking forward to his next piece of writing.

Have you voted for your top ten books for World Book Night 2012?

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

Today I had an email from World Book Night, thanking me for voting for my top ten books.  It also suggests to forward the email on to anyone who might still wish to vote ... so instead I've copied the text of the email into this post below.  But be quick - there are only 2 days left to vote ...

Thousands of people have nominated almost 7000 different titles so far but we want as many people as possible to tell us their favourite books, so if there's anyone you know who you think might like to share their favourite books and be a small part of World Book Night then please forward them this email.

Submitting books is easy (though we know how hard it is to actually pick your favourites - sorry!)

1. Go to www.worldbooknight.org
2. Register or sign in (and you can also sign in with your Facebook profile if you'd rather)
3. Search for your favourite books and add them to your list (you don't have to choose 10, you can just choose a few)

We'll be releasing the top 100 at the beginning of September and they'll be informing the choice of our editorial selection committee, chaired by bestselling novelist Tracy Chevalier, who will be picking the books next week. We'll be announcing the WBN 2012 titles in mid October and opening the giver application process.

Spriteby asked me what books I chose, so I am listing these below.  If you have read any of my posts on choosing my forty books, you probably won't find any surprises.  These are in no particular order.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
"The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
"The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde
"The Things they Carried" by Tim O'Brien
"Ulysses" by James Joyce
"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte
"The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje
"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova
"Our Man in Havana" by Graham Greene

If I could convince you all just to read one of these books, it would be Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried" - it's a collection of short stories focusing on the Vietnam War.  I don't normally like war novels or films, but this is an incredible book.

"Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud," by Andrew Lane

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

I was loaned this book by a friend (Hi Bill!), who we were meeting for lunch today, because he knows that I enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories.  I thought that I would write a quick post about it, as meeting Bill today has had me thinking about my response to the book.

Andrew Lane's hero is the teenage Sherlock Holmes.  In true Enid Blyton style, the young Holmes is at boarding school but stumbles into a mystery during school holidays.  He has been unable to go home, as his mother is unwell and his father has been stationed in India, so his brother, Mycroft, picks him up from school and takes the unwilling Sherlock to stay with his uncle and aunt.  A loner at school, he makes a rare friend of a street ruffian, Matty Arnatt.  Matty has seen a mysterious cloud leaving the scene where a dead body is found and, shortly after, Sherlock himself discovers a disfigured dead body.  Amyus Crowe, who has been hired by Mycroft as Sherlock's tutor for the holiday, aids in solving the mystery surrounding the dead bodies while also teaching Sherlock how to think.

In my post on "Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers," I wrote that the author, Gyles Brandreth, was reverse engineering elements from the Sherlock Holmes canon.  Andrew Lane is doing something very similar in taking the eccentricities of Conan Doyle's character and giving Holmes a teenage back-story that could create the emotionally distant, rational adult (dysfunctional family, oppressive boarding school).  This novel is written for a teenage audience, and the straightforward language reflects this, but there are elements here that the adult Holmes fan will also enjoy (for example, Holmes uncle is called Sherrinford, which I believe was one of the names that Conan Doyle considered for his creation).  The mystery is well-paced and, in a nice touch, the bad guy is called Baron Maupertuis (the Conan Doyle canon is littered with mysteries mentioned but not explained and, in "The Reigate Squires," Watson refers to the "colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis").  I also enjoyed this novel because, in Baron Maupertuis, Andrew Lane has created a memorable, grotesque villain with an entertaining line in barking mad vendettas.

I'm not sure that I feel a pressing urge to seek out Andrew Lane's further Young Sherlock Holmes mysteries - I already have a huge pile of books waiting to be read - but this was a fun way to spend a few hours.

And thank you, Annalisa, for my Liebster Award!

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

In my recent post accepting my Stylish Blogger Award from Gill, I passed the award on to Annalisa Crawford, who has a great blog about her writing called "Wake up, eat, write, sleep." By an odd coincidence, Annalisa visited my blog on the same day to give me a Liebster Award.  I think prior to this weekend the only award that I had was for having the shortest legs in 6th form (I think I still have the certificate somewhere), and now I get two awards in one weekend.

Annalisa quoted the following rules for the acceptance of the Liebster Award:

The Liebster Award (meaning “friend” in German) is meant to connect us even more and spotlight new bloggers who have less than 200 followers – but hopefully not for long. The rules are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the Internet – other writers.
5. And best of all – have fun and spread the karma! 

I do have 5 people in mind

For my first Liebster Award, I'd like to be a bit nepotistic and suggest my husband, Mark Cockram, who writes a blog,"Nerdology." His specialist subjects are Doctor Who, films (he writes often about Laurel and Hardy, and has a project to watch and write on all of the American Film Institute top 100 movies), gadgets and games.  I'm not sure what to write to big him up, as he is so great that no words would do him justice.

For my second nomination, I'd like to suggest Gill Fraser-Lee.  Gill and I found each other through Twitter due to our mutual admiration of the peerless Jeremy Northam.  Gill has an excellent and recently revamped blog about Jeremy, as well as other blogs with different emphases at "Queen of Lukewarm" and "These Foolish Things." Gill is an intelligent, engaging and funny writer who has been very supportive of my blog, and her blogs are well worth checking.  Especially if you like Jeremy Northam.  But many of you probably knew that already....

For my third and fourth nominations I am going to suggest a couple of blogs by people I don't know well personally, but whose blogs I enjoy.  One of my favourite genres to read is crime fiction, and both of these blogs are well written and by people far more knowledgeable than me in this area.

My third nomination is Spriteby, who writes a book blog called "Spriteby's Bokhylle."  I considered nominating Spriteby for the Stylish Blogger Award but, as he/she writes anonymously, I did not think that he/she would welcome being asked to provide the autobiographical information required by the challenge.  I regularly check Spriteby's blog for reviews and for recommendation to advance my own reading in the area, and Spriteby is particularly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Scandinavian crime fiction.

My fourth choice is Margot Kinberg, who writes a blog at "Confessions of a Mystery Novelist." Like Spriteby, her blog is well-written and shows a wealth of knowledge of her subject.  Margot writes regular "In the spotlight" posts about specific authors and novels, modern and classic, as well as writing posts on themes across crime fiction writing and writers.

My final choice is a friend of mine, Mina Searle, who has written a couple of posts on a blog that she has started called "I would rather be cross stitching."  Mina is a blogging novice who has only written a couple of posts so far, so I would like to offer Mina a Liebster Award as recognition of how much I have enjoyed her couple of posts so far and encouragement to keep on writing.  I enjoy cross stitching to relax also, but I have nowhere near the number of kits to do that Mina has. This is just as well, as I have been doing the same large kit for years (but part of my new relaxation regime is to do 10-15 minutes a day of stitching as "me time").

These awards are with the qualification that, as some bloggers do not include their follower statistics on their blog, I am not sure if Gill, Margot or Spriteby have over 200 followers.  Quite possibly they do - if they don't, they should have - in which case I apologise for unknowingly contravening one of the tenets of the Liebster Awards.  But that doesn't change the fact that I think they are all entertaining writers and worth looking up.

Thank you, Gill, for my Stylish Blogger Award!

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

Gill Fraser-Lee, who has a number of excellent blogs, has very deservedly won a Stylish Blogger Award which she accepted in her blog here. Gill has been very kind and supportive about my blog and was nice enough to nominate me for a Stylish Blogger Award as well.  Thank you Gill!  I am honoured to be nominated for this alongside other talented writers of entertaining blogs such as Lady Byron. I haven't checked out the other writers that Gill mentions, but I will be sure to do so (Janelle Dvorak and Sue Vorenberg). In honour of this award and to prove my stylish credentials I am writing this while wearing an evening dress, black elbow length evening gloves, silk stockings and I have my hair in a sophisticated chignon.

To accept this award I apparently have to admit to 10 things that you don't already know, and to nominate other stylish bloggers.  It is difficult to admit to 10 things that you don't know about me, because I have no shame and I tend to compulsively admit to embarrassing things on Twitter and on Facebook if I think that they might make people laugh.  I've even written a trivia page on my blog already, on which I have admitted to many things that any reasonable person would try not to mention.  I feel it would be cheating to re-use some of these, so I need to try to think of some more....

• I totally lied above.  I'm actually being a slob and lazing around in an old, baggy T-shirt.  Still think I'm stylish now, Gill?
• I have OCD tendencies.  I have different coloured pegs for hanging out washing, and I like to make sure that I don't mix colours on an item.  If I use more than one peg on something, then they need to be the same colour.
• The one thing that I can't do, but wish I could, is sing.  I have a horrible voice and can never seem to catch the right pitch.  I have a real mental block in singing publicly, probably because I don't like to cause suffering.  On my hen night I was challenged by one friend to sing something from the Sound of Music, and challenged by another friend to run naked around the cottage we had rented for the weekend.  The idea of the latter scared me less (although I didn't do it).
• I have flashed before, but I have never mooned anyone.  I don't think it is my best side.
• As part of a late teenage rebellion (about 10 years late) I got a tattoo.  It's the Chinese symbol for love - at least, as I don't speak Chinese, I really hope it is - on my right hip.  It 's a horrendous cliche, I know, but I still like it.  When I told Dad that I had got a tattoo he did the silent disapproval thing.

How many have I done now?  Five.  Ok. 

•  Whenever I get stressed, I buy camomile tea, thinking it is good for me but ignoring the fact that I hate the taste of the stuff.  I use about 2 teabags, get even more stressed forcing myself to drink something horrible, and then don't use the rest.  I bought some today thinking it might be different (it has honey and vanilla in it as well).  It will probably be just the same.
• At various times of my life I have been told I look like: Gillian Anderson, Kate Winslet, the young Tatum O' Neal, Kirsty MacColl (I'd tried doing my hair in rags and I ended up with Big Hair) and Sophie Aldred.  I don't think I look like any of them.
• I would still love to write a book, but I feel rather embarrassed about the idea of writing a sex scene because I would be worried that my parents might read it.
• I think that my first crush was Noel Edmonds.  That might be the most embarrassing thing that I have ever admitted to.
• There are 2 entries for this list that I wrote and then deleted because I didn't think that I should admit to them.

I am not as well connected as Gill, so I did find it a bit harder to think of my nominations for the Stylish Blogger Award.  But I have decided to go for......

•  My lovely husband Mark Cockram, who has a blog at "Nerdology".  He writes on films, gadgets and TV, and I think his blog is a lot more stylish than mine because he has more of the geek expertise needed to layout a blog and add gadgets and photos.  And I would like to see if he can surprise me with any of his 10 things...
• Annalisa Crawford, who has a very interesting blog about her writing at "Wake up, eat, write sleep".  I was at 6th form with Annalisa and lost touch for a while, and it is good to have got back in touch through Facebook.