Remember me?

I’m that person who used to read lots and lots of books and then would write reviews about them which were hopefully interesting and intelligent, always personal, and generally timely…i.e. shortly after I finished the book.

And then…I vanished.

I have had to apologise on my other blogs as well. Over the summer, things just got away from me – life and work in particular. I just didn’t have time to review every book I read, and the longer the backlog grew, the harder it was for me to come back to the blog.

So, I called a moratorium, and gave myself permission to forget the 10 or 15 or 20 books I have read since I last reviewed (I can’t even remember how many it is now, that’s how bad it got) and to start again afresh. The shame of it is that I started this blog as a diary mainly for myself of what I had read. By putting too much pressure on myself, I lost track of that list and my personal diary became a personal millstone.

So, I am picking back up and getting on with it. I am still reading and as a result I should still be writing.

So here I am again. I missed you.

So…

I am setting myself a schedule to review all of the books that I have finished but not yet written. And, I am making that schedule very public (so you can all hold me to account). I find it tough to write more than one review a day, so I will try and be reasonably kind on myself, but here is the list with the date I am going to post the review after each book:

The Hidden by Tobias Hill – 27 May 2009
La Symphonie Pastorale by Andre Gide – 28 May 2009
The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin – 29 May 2009
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong – 2 June 2009
Best Intentions by Emily Listfield – 3 June 2009 (a requested review. I haven’t quite finished the book yet, so if I finish it sooner, I will post this sooner) 
The Outcast by  Sadie Jones – 5 June 2009
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson – 6 June 2009
A Certain Justice by PD James – 7 June 2009
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor – 9 June 2009
The Black Tower by PD James – 10 June 2009
The Murder Room by PD James – 10 June 2009

That’s quite a list! And, of course, I am still reading. But I’ll link to the review as I go.

Watch this blog space…

I think there are several issues. Firstly, I have been super busy with work. Because I work with social media, it means I am at the computer all day, every day. When I get home in the evening, I do like to switch off – and I switch off with a book generally. Switching on the laptop isn’t really my number one priority, so unless I get my reviews written during the day, they just aren’t getting written.

The second issue is that I would like to put more substance into my reviews. I read The London Review of Books quite frequently (I say that because although I am a subscriber, I am somewhat behind in reading those as well!) and I am always blown away by the eleoquence and depth of the reviews therein. I understand that those type of reviews (most of which are fairly hefty essays rather than simple reviews) aren’t appropriate for a blog, which needs to be succinct and to the point, but to be able to catch some of the essence of those kind of reviews would be fabulous. As I write, I am conscious that I repeat myself and I wish I wouldn’t. What that has done is made me hesitate over my reviews, abandoning them for another day when I feel I can word my thoughts more appropriately.

As such, I have most than ten draft posts sitting here on the blog, waiting to be finished. As I have finished each book, I have dutifully started a new post, noted down the details of the book and the date I finished it, and written some brief notes about my thoughts. And then I have left it, meaning to come back and finish it. Unfortuantely now I am six weeks and ten books behind, so it is about time I pulled myself together and got on with it, otherwise my lovely record of all of the books I have read will become a relic.

I love browsing around Amazon and tracking down books which you are unlikely to find in a high street book store, simply due to the lack of space. It is why I am an Amazon Prime member – it means that when I do find my book, as long as it is in stock I generally only have to wait a day for it. However, if it is not in stock… For instance, I recently purchased Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World, however as it was not in stock on Amazon, I had to wait almost 10 days for it to arrive. I know, 10 days isn’t really that long but when you want to read it, well, it seems like an eternity. Similarly, sometimes my Amazon orders arrive by courier and as I am not at home during the day, I invariably have to wait until I can drive out to the depot to go and pick it up. Small things, but if there was a solution, I’d use it.

And, it seems like that solution might be here. Books on demand, while you wait, selected from a list of a million titles. To me, it’s a dream come true. To me, who will resist getting a Kindle for as long as they still produce books from paper, this is a sign that perhaps, as Sam Houston suggests, books aren’t dead after all. I knew they wouldn’t be, and I suspect the manufacturers of this machine knew that too.

Working in Central London, I suspect it isn’t going to take long before one of these machines finds there way to a Blackwells within walking distance of me. I already have a list of books I’d like which are difficult to find and Amazon seem to be out, so I’ll be down there, with my coffee, waiting for my turn to print my book when I want it.

And smiling.

Goodness. Is that all?

That’s just not enough.

The article goes on to talk about how, due to this limitation, it is so important to choose your reading carefully and not to waste your time on ‘bad books’. But I kept getting caught on how few 3000 books actually is. Just to put it in perspective, I own nearly 1000 books – which would make up a third of my lifetime quota already. I would love to read my way through my entire book collection (which grows at a rate of 5 – 10 books a month) but still allowing myself to get distracted by library books, book club books, borrowed books, re-reads of favourites and the plethora of other reading material that is out there. Which then begs the question. Am I simply being unrealistic?

I am in no place to estimate my own life expectancy, nor my ability to continue to read until I reach it, but of course I hope the prognosis on both will be good. But being well into my 30′s already, I am a long way past the 13 year old starting age. Can I start my 3000 all over again please?

Realistically, I can read more than a book a week, which increases my numbers. I have joined the 75 book challenge over at LibraryThing in conjunction with various other reading challenges this year, so that ups my total by 50% at least. Then there is always the example of this lady who is looking to read 200 books this year. She’s certainly defying the average.

The problem is, there are so many admirable books out there. There are so many exciting stories to read. There are so many fascinating things to learn and amazing things to discover between the pages of books. Even some of the ‘bad books’ merit a read. I have spent time with books that reviewers have slated and been pleased I made the effort. I have persevered with books I started out hating and not been sorry. Of course, there were some which I was sorry and hated all the way through, but how would I have known the difference if I hadn’t persevered? Now I wonder, has that one bad book has taken up one of my precious quota?

As much as I hope for immortality to achieve my quest of reading everything in the Amazon catalogue, being a realist I am not really holding my hopes up. In the meantime, all we can do is our best.

3000 books just isn’t enough.

I had better get reading.

Stephen Amidon writes about the new device for the Times Online and comes to quite a positive conclusion, however it is his final paragraph which struck a chord with me.

The beauty and genius of the traditional book is that it is a thing unto itself. It is self-contained. Its limitations are its strength. It has covers, and between them is an entire world created by the interplay between the author’s imagination and the reader’s. Once you connect that autonomous world to the shifting, boundless, hyperactive universe of cyberspace, you run the very real risk of severing that magical bond of imagination…By opening up the book to the limitless possibilities of the digital age, Amazon just might be risking closing it for good.

I love books because I love the fact that the story plays out in my imagination. The instant I open the cover I am transported to another place and can sit in silence, completely unaware that anything or nothing is happening around me, totally lost in the world of the book. I don’t want to have hyperlinks to video, music clips or pictures. I don’t want aides to my imagination. I don’t want anything which is going to remind me that I am actually in the real world. Television does that for me already, which is why I tend not to watch it. Books are my escapism.

Furthermore, and I know I am going to sound like an old traditionalist here, I love the feel of the paper. I love being able to flick ahead, or check how far into the book I am. I love picking up old books in second hand bookstores and finding someone’s old bus ticket or a scribbled ‘with love’ in the cover. And I just adore standing in front of my bookshelves, my head on one side as I go through that delicious decision about what I am going to read next. Nothing in the world could take that experience away from me. It is why I am a book addict.

I had to smile though at an alternative article by Steven Poole of The Guardian. In it, he lists all the things an eBook reader would need before it could truly replace paper books. It is a pretty tough list for an electronic device, and a pretty easy one of the humble book. I had to agree with all of them (except ripping out a page to write a phone number on!). Unlike music, where the primary purpose is to listen to it and really the method of delivery isn’t that important (although the better the sound quality, arguably the greater the enjoyment), books aren’t just about reading a story. They are a whole experience. And I, for one, am not planning on giving that up even if I am the last woman standing hugging my old book collection to myself.

I love reading the book reviews in the Prospect magazine each month, and whenever I do buy the newspaper (which, I have to admit, is not often), the books section is generally the first section I go to. I pick up the Times Literary Supplement and The New Yorker whenever I can get them, and I generally find my list of ‘books to buy’ grows rapidly from these recommendations. However, I also love the reviews written at grass roots level – the Amazon reviews, the reviews on LibraryThing, individual book blogs. I think the book world is a much richer place because of this flood of new opinion, but, like Skidelsky, I wouldn’t like to see the traditional book review die.

This made me think about my own writing, and then made me start to wonder – what is it that makes a great book review? I tend to read quite quickly which I am sure means I miss things (but which has the concomitant benefit of enjoying the book for a whole raft of different reasons the next time I pick it up). In order to write the exquisite, measured reviews of Prospect, the first thing I thought was to slow down, or at least read with a notebook and pen beside me to take notes of things as I thought of them.

I think it also requires a good, rounded world view and being well-read definitely helps. Then there is the ability to craft words and opinion so that they are coherent, and make pertinent comparisons and constructive criticism.

It also presupposes that you know how to read a book. That may sound strange, because we all know how to read, but there is reading and there is reading thoroughly. I think the latter requires many different skills – an understanding of narrative voice, plot, characterisation, theme, context, genre etc. etc. Perhaps those of us who have spent the past 30 years of their lives with their nose in a book are subconsciously aware of these things, but I believe the art of a great book review is to take these things out of the subconscious and deliver them succinctly as part of the argument.

I am aware that in order to be a great book reviewer, I have a long way to go and a lot to learn but it is a journey I am glad to take. I think having a blog, rather than thinning the quality, in fact gives those of us who care enough a medium to practice and improve. And in the meantime, I will continue to study the reviews delivered to me in my favourite magazines and each time I do, I will pick up one tiny bit extra which will make my own review writing improve.

And in the meantime, I continue to ask the question. What is it that makes a great book review?

The first is LibraryThing – originally, being somewhat anal about recording things, I had catalogued all of my books using a pretty fabulous piece of software called Book Collector from collectorz.com. The reason I loved this was that I could just plug in my ISBN number and in most cases, all the details of my book would spring up from Amazon or any of the other sources I had identified, ready to be written to my database. I went through my whole collection, including those books too early for an ISBN, and was temporarily satisfied.

It was about that time that I discovered LibraryThing. I was in a second hand book shop and I couldn’t for the life of me remember whether I owned any Graham Greene, and if I did, which one. I remember thinking “if only I could log on to my catalogue from my mobile and check…” The long and short of it is I didn’t own any Graham Greene, so having missed out on a bargain, I hunted around for an online catalogue.

I haven’t looked back. Not only is it easy to transfer your database, but you have the added bonus of a strong community. I spend hours virtually wandering through the libraries, reviews, groups and comments of my fellow book addicts. I always knew that there were plenty of us out there – it was just nice to find a place where we could all congregate – no matter where we were in the world.

Reading Challenges

And then, after joining several groups, I discovered the fun of reading challenges! Although I had set myself challenges before, it is so much more fun when you aren’t doing it on your own. I immediately signed up for the 75 Book Challenge Group on LibraryThing – which means I need to read 75 books this year. I have been a bit slow so far, but hopefully I will catch up…considering some of my fellow readers are already 10 or 15 books in. I then discovered a whole lot of others in other parts of the web including

The Pulitzer Project – read all 81 winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Complete Booker – Read all 41 winners of the Man Booker Prize forFiction

The Triple 8 Challenge – Read 8 books from 8 categories over the year

This is just the start! Fortunately, you can read one book and have it count for more than one challenge, otherwise you wouldn’t do anything else but read.

So, despite the fact it is already February, I’m game…